Spanish Dialogues: Picasso Works from the Museum Berggruen visit the Bode-Museum

Pablo Picasso’s fascination with the Spanish old master El Greco was the subject of a recent major exhibition, but this show at the Bode-Museum in Berlin (13 July–21 January 2024) explores how the modern artist borrowed from classical Spanish artistic traditions more broadly. The first of in a new series of exhibitions titled ‘Spanish Dialogues’  brings together highlights from the Bode-Museum’s collections of Spanish artworks dating between 14th to 18th centuries with eight of Picasso’s works from the Museum Berggruen. Picasso’s formidable Woman Sitting in an Armchair (1939) is paired with a 16th-century bust of a Castilian Lady while his Portrait of Nusch Éluard (1937), the wife of the French poet and art collector Paul Éluard, is placed alongside the Baroque sculptor Pedro Roldán’s bust Mater Dolorosa (c. 1670–75). Find out more on the Bode-Museum’s website.

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Mater Dolorosa (c. 1624), Pedro Roldán. Photo: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst/ Antje Voigt

Portrait of Nusch (1937), Pablo Picasso. Museum Bergguen, Berlin. Photo: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen/Jens Ziehe/Succession Picasso/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023

Castilian Woman (1530), Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein. Photo: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst/Antje Voigt

Woman sitting in an armchair (1939), Pablo Picasso. Museum Berggruen, Berlin. Photo: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen/Jens Ziehe/Succession Picasso/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023