Picasso and Dali at Museu Picasso, Barcelona

Am sitting in the bar of my hotel (get her) and pondering on what I saw today.  

The Museum is one of the loveliest buildings I have been to…and I’ve been to a few!  The exhibition was beautifully curated with comparison pieces throughout. My notebook is full of information and if I translated that into one post, it would be on the scale of an epic novel. 

Therefore, this needs to be a short exploration of how Picasso influenced Dali in a way that made him fly rather than this being a mutual development of style. What I saw was that Picasso had his own way that developed over time, but that, for a time, Dali became a follower but then changed his direction from flattery to his own unique interpretations. 

Take, for instance, these two ‘Still Life with fruit’ -Dali on the left and Picasso on the right. With Picasso preceding Dali by some years, you can see the flattering comparison.  
 

But, when Dali’s embrace of surrealism takes over, we see how much Picasso and the cubists were a starting point for him. I loved this pairing as, for once, Dali came first but it is the differences that are so noticeable. Picasso is continuing to distill the physical form into its component parts but Dali’s painting is now embodying the surrealists aspects we associate with him. Floating breasts, donkey with hands, and other symbolist images. This was my second favourite Dali painting -more on that in another post.  

  
From what I see, it was very clear that Picasso would have been ‘Picasso’, no matter what, but for Dali, the initial meeting and the development of the relationship was key to his change of style. 

I was so excited about coming here to see this exhibition and was not disappointed.  Think I have enough material to write several posts and would dearly like to come back again.