Picasso and El Greco

Attracting visitors. The poster on Freiburg's advertising boards.

When the Basel Kunstmuseum advertised its exhibition, Picasso El Greco, Red Baron was excited.

Picasso and El Greco, those dissenters (Abweichler), are always on my mind. A well-organized comparison will shed new light on Picasso's work, for he said, "What I really like in El Greco's work are the portraits, all those gentlemen with pointed beards." 

To make the trip to Basel attractive, the museum chose attractive females (What else?) for its poster. It shows Madame Canals from Picasso's Rose Period juxtaposed with Lady in a Fur Wrap. However, this painting originated in El Greco's workshop. Whether the master lent his hand to the painting is unknown. I doubt it, for the style is too precise and somewhat conventional. According to Wikipedia, the painting is now attributed to Alonso Sánchez Coello.

When I proposed that the Museumsgesellschaft visit the gallery, the response to my call was exceptional.

©Hal Jos

While our group traveled to Basel by chartered bus, one of our members, a professor of biology and artist, Hal Jos, gave a witty, expert introduction.

At the entrance to the exhibition, one paper filled with sketches drew all my attention:

These are sketches Picasso made at the Prado he visited with his painter colleague and friend Francisco Bernareggi, called Pancho: "We sent out our copies to our professor in Barcelona, Picasso's father. All was well so long as we worked on Velasquez, Goya, and the Venetians - but the day we decided to do a copy of El Greco and sent it to him, his reaction was, 'You're taking the wrong path.' That was in 1897, when El Greco was considered a menace."

The exhibition followed Picasso's development by placing his pictures alongside El Greco's paintings.

Self-Portrait (Blue Period), Paris 1901

Portrait of an old man, 1595

Boy leading a horse (Rose Period), 1905

Saint Martin and the beggar, 1597

Man, woman, and child, Paris, 1906

The Holy Family with Saint Anna and the infant Saint John, 1600

Bust of a woman (Cubism), 1907

The Virgin Mary, 1590

Head of a woman, Paris, 1908

El Greco's workshop: Mater dolorosa, 1587

Seated nude, 1909

The penitent Magdalene, 1580

Portrait of D. H. Kahnweiler II, Juni 1957

Saint Joseph, 1577

Jaume Sebartes with ruff and bonnet, Royan, 1939

An elderly gentleman, 1587

Looking at El Greco's Saint Martin and the beggar, I recalled the quarrel in Freiburg about a painting on Saint Martin's gate. Could we not simply incorporate El Greco's masterpiece?

The Coronation of the Virgin, 1592

And there is more. Contemplating El Greco's Coronation of the Virgin, I recalled the frivolous altarpiece in the Freiburg Minster, painted by Hans Baldung Grien, another Abweichler.

Krönung Mariens (©Wikipedia/PogoEngel)

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