An intimate and everyday Picasso, in the lens of Lucien Clergue

The tour opens, which can be seen until October 10, with the first time that Clergue portrayed the artist. It was on April 5, 1953, when they coincided in a bullfight in Arles, the photographer’s hometown. They did not know each other, but Picasso asked that young man of just 19 years Keep sending him photos of yourself. It was not until two years later that they met again at the painter’s house in Cannes, La California, and he invited him to take his portrait. Clergue, who considered that day the most beautiful of his life, attributed that privilege to the fact that the painter had liked his photos of mountebankswhich linked with the spirit of his Harlequins, his rehearsals of animal carcasses and the destruction of Arles by Allied bombing. “carrion and ruins they reflected a macabre universe that he himself had represented in ‘Guernica’. The war was drawing us closer. Also bullfights,” explained the photographer.

Photos of the absence

Their friendship and relationship continued until Picasso’s death in 1973. In 1978, the photographer returned to the house at Jacqueline’s request. Her snapshots reflect the artist’s absence, the empty studio, and the sadness of the widow as she watches various works packed for transportation.

The exhibition shows “the value of photography itself and is a tribute to the photographer, who already at the age of 18 had the gaze of the creator”, he highlights Silvia Domenech, who would curate the exhibition together with Guigon. Picasso introduced him to his friends, among them, filmmaker Jean Cocteauwho invited him to participate in the shooting of ‘The Testament of Orpheus’, work that was decisive for Clergue to dedicate himself definitively to professional photography. He was the official photographer of the film, in which Picasso also appeared. One of the images shows him relaxed and smoking on the set, chatting with Luis Miguel Dominguín before Lucía Bosé and Jaqueline.

a picasso tender and thoughtful, uninhibited and funny, close… tour the exhibition. At an antique dealer’s house in 1959 with Paco Muñoz playing a trumpet, dancing in 1964 with the flamenco guitarist Silver Handyman at a gypsy party, stamping his signature on a guitar or with Clergue’s daughters, a little more than a baby. In the last photos she took of the artist, in 1971, she reflects the man she knew: “strong, triumphant, vulnerable, shy, jaded, greedy and happy to live.”

The passion for engraving

In parallel, the Carrer de Montcada museum opens another exhibition arising from its collection thanks to the archives donated in 2015 by David Leclerc, nephew of brigitte baer (1931-2005), author of the catalog raisonné of the more than 2,000 engravings by Picasso.

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‘Brigitte Baer. Picasso and his engravings ‘reflects the passion for engraving of this woman of extensive culture who did not get to know the artist and vindicates her cataloging work, “meticulous, intelligent and careful”, adds Domènech, also a curator together with Núria Solé, who highlights her role as an art historian and her “obsessive” task, carried out with scientific rigor and seeking all possible information” on each piece.

The exhibition exhibits 50 engravings, accompanied by cards and handwritten texts annotated by Baer that attest to his method. She took over from Bernhard Geiser, who before he died he only published two volumes, which Baer completed and multiplied to seven.