RAFART PLANAS, CLAUSTRE
Picasso arrived in Barcelona in 1895, just before the age of fourteen, and he lived there until 1904, when he moved to Paris. During this decisive period in his artistic life, the painter produced a series of landscapes of the Barcelona of his beginnings: The Landscapes of Picasso's Barcelona. Today, more than one hundred years after their creation, these landscapes by Picasso are an essential fragment of the historical, artistic and cultural mosaic of the Barcelona of the turn of the century. In these landscapes we can watch Picasso's development in the years that go from learning the painter's trade to his links with the Catalan artistic avant-garde and the formation of his first personal style: the Blue Period. We see how Picasso, in short, became one of the twentieth century's most outstanding artists. In this book, Picasso's works are accompanied by some very special photographs, pictures centred around Picasso: landscapes and scenes the same as or similar to the ones painted and drawn by the artist, photographed at more or less the same time Picasso was working, so that we get a close-up view of the Barcelona that inspired his painting. We shall let Picasso take us by the hand and lead us through his Barcelonas?some still exist, others have given way to progress; some are unusual, others everyday; some are at street level, others raised on high skylines... we shall take a walk full of surprises through past and present in The landscapes of Picasso's Barcelona.
