Picasso’s morriña
There is an anecdote that sums up Picasso’s morriña, his longing for his home country. One day, Luis Miguel Dominguín sent his friend Pablo a ham. After it had been eaten, Picasso called the bullfighter to tell him about his dilemma: what should he do with the bone? As far as he was concerned, the Spanish bone of a Spanish ham could not be buried in a foreign land. Dominguín agreed. The bullfighter went to France and together they buried the bone in the garden of the Spanish consulate in Marseille.[1]
Picasso liked to feel close to his culture and his roots. He was drawn to the Catalan character and identity during his stays in Roussillon (between 1953 and 1955). The artist devoted himself to his passion for bullfighting, especially in Céret. Perpignan reminded him of the atmosphere of his nearby country of origin. He had Paule Lazerme, with whom he stayed, dress in the traditional Catalan costume when she sat for her portrait. And when he posed for the photographer Raymond Fabre, who followed him on his walks around the city, he liked to wear a traditional barretina. In 1954, he made sketches of men wearing this hat.[2]
Picasso’s mind was set: he would never return to Spain and “did not want Guernica and all its preparatory paintings to enter or stay in Spain as long as Franco was alive.” The painting did indeed remain at MoMA in New York for several decades. It was presented in Madrid after the dictator's death and the return of democracy, going on display at the Buen Retiro in 1981 before being moved to its current location at the Museo Reina Sofía in 1992.
In July 1976, several months after Franco’s death (on November 20, 1975), at the Venice Biennale, the official pavilion was symbolically closed and an ambitious exhibition titled Spain. Artistic Avant-Garde and Social Reality, 1936-1976 was conceived for the central pavilion by a group of art critics and artists.[3] The series Sueño y Mentira de Franco (1937) opened the show, posthumously reinstating Picasso as an inspiration for the generation that went into exile and the fight against Franco.
A tribute to the man who proclaimed his Spanish culture and roots up until the end of his life. Like a manifesto.
[1] The exhibition Picasso - Dominguin, une amitié was held at the Musée des cultures taurines in Nîmes in 2018.
[2] On this subject, see the essay by Joséphine Matamoros in the catalogue Picasso Perpignan, éditions Snoeck, 2017, p. 157.
[3] España: Vanguardia artística y realidad social, exhibition catalogue, Valencia, IVAM, 2018. The 1976 exhibition was primarily coordinated by Tomàs Llorens, who would later become the founder of the IVAM and then the director of the Museo Reina Sofía, and Valeriano Bozal@.
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Summary