Llegan Picasso y El Greco a Suiza

There are only two days left until the opening of “Picasso visita El Greco” at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland.

Last week, our art team at SIT Spain had the honour of packing and transporting more than thirty works from Spain’s major museums of Spanish Pablo Picasso and the Cretan-born artist Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco. They were transported to the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland to be unpacked and prepared for exhibition. This museum houses the largest and most important public art collection in Switzerland and is listed as a national heritage site.

Some pieces chosen for this El Greco exhibition are very peculiar, as many of them have hardly travelled and belong to various parishes.

The exhibition looks at the “face to face” between two of the world’s most famous artists, examining how the Greek artist who lived in Spain had a great impact on Pablo Picasso, who became his great admirer.

The exhibition follows the chronology of Picasso and how he developed his artistic style and how he was inspired to create many of his works by the works of El Greco, comparing their styles and their similarities. For example, the work that inspired Picasso’s 1901 “Evocation” was El Greco’s “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz” from 1580. It also includes El Greco’s depictions of the saints, including “Saint Paul” from 1585.

The exhibition is the result of an institutional exchange, where the Kunstmuseum Basel receives the works of both artists from Spain and the Museo del Greco in Toledo will in turn receive two works by Pablo Picasso, which have been received as a cultural exchange with the Kunstmuseum Basel (Switzerland).