After a year 2024 in which Museu Picasso Barcelona has been visited by more people than ever before in its history (a total of 1.130.000), the centre on Carrer de Montcada has already announced the exhibitions it will be presenting in 2025, two exhibitions dedicated to Pablo Picasso‘s relationship with the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona and to the influence on the work of the Malaga painter (and many other artists) of the creations of Alfred Jarry, the playwright and poet who invented Ubu Roi. 

All this will take place during a year in which the Museum continues with the transformations it has been undergoing in recent years. This June, we will see a new presentation of the permanent collection that will be easier to understand, as it will have more contextual elements. It will be one of the novelties of a space in constant transformation that will inaugurate a new space for the reception of visitors at the end of the year (in the picture).

The exhibition ‘Pablo Picasso and the Sala Gaspar (1955-1973)’, which can be seen from 26 June to 26 October 2025, curated by Aitor Quiney, will remind us of the moment when the brothers and gallery owners Joan and Miquel Gaspar got to know Picasso thanks to the mediation of the artist’s secretary, Jaume Sabartés, and the artist Antoni Clavé. Such was the harmony between the gallery owners and the artist that, between 1956 and 1973 (the year of Picasso’s death), all the exhibitions of works by the Malaga-born artist that were on display in the city passed through the hands of these two men. The photographs show long lines of Barcelona men and women to see the genius’s creations.

An artistic and personal friendship grew between Picasso and his wife, Jacqueline Roque, and Miquel and Joan Gaspar and their spouses, Elvira Farreras and Ena Alba, which led the Gaspars to become involved in everything to do with the painter that happened in the city. Thus, they were present, for example, at the moment of the transfer of Las Meninas to the Picasso Museum, which was born in 1963.

The one dedicated to Picasso’s relationship with the Sala Gaspar is not the only temporary exhibition planned for the Picasso Museum in 2025. From 27 November to 6 April, it will also be possible to see ‘Ubú pintor. Alfred Jarry and the arts’, an exhibition curated by Emmanuel Guigon. The author of Ubu Roi saw how the surrealists adopted the character he had created, who appeared in works by Max Ernst or left his mark on Man Ray or Marcel Duchamp. Artists of the time, such as Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso himself, admired Jarry openly and many of them became members, after the Second World War, of the Col-legi de Patafisica, which played a fundamental role in the study and dissemination of Jarry’s work.

Works by Jarry and his immediate circle (Pierre Bonnard, Paul Gauguin, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Charles Filiger, etc.) form part of the exhibition, which also explores Jarry’s influence on the circle of surrealist artists and the way in which he has influenced the creations of modern artists such as William Kentridge and Robert Wilson.

The exhibition-dossier ‘Picasso and the surrealist magazines’, which will open this fall and shows how surrealist publications embraced Pablo Picasso as one of their own, rounds off the list of exhibition proposals for 2025.

Among the novelties this year is the announcement of the first edition of the Sabartés Prize, dedicated to honouring the memory of the man who was Picasso’s personal secretary and one of the architects of the creation of the Museu Picasso Barcelona. An academic prize is awarded for research into Picasso’s work and biography, and an artistic prize for contemporary projects inspired by the figure, style, themes or techniques of Pablo Picasso.

The exhibitions at the Museu Picasso will be accompanied in the future by lectures, talks, musical listening sessions, live art sessions and trips to museums. There will also be flamenco concerts, in a programme designed in collaboration with El Dorado flamenco association.

If you want to know all about the programme of the Museu Picasso Barcelona for this 2025, consult the website of the centre.