Pablo Picasso’s lifelong battle against the fading of art is a thread that runs through a striking new temporary exhibition at the Malaga Picasso Museum, titled Echo of Picasso. The show highlights the enduring vitality of Picasso’s work from La Merced and his relentless experiments, reminding viewers that art can stay alive when ideas are shared and reinterpreted. As the curator notes, Picasso’s approach created an endless chain of inspirations, proper nouns, isms, and trends that serve a purpose beyond art itself, inviting audiences to glimpse the deeper meanings behind familiar objects and forms. In this moment, the Malaga-based artist faces a lineage of contemporary creators who, while born decades later, continue to push boundaries and engage with his legacy.
The newly opened exhibition is scheduled to run through March 2024, offering a curated map of late 20th-century and contemporary art through 85 works by 55 artists. The lineup spans figures such as De Kooning, Basquiat, Bourgeois, Koons, Bacon, and Kippenberger, whose surnames helped redefine modernity. Today’s rising voices, including artists Jameson Green and Thomas Houseago, contribute to a dialogue that traces Picasso’s influence into the present. These pieces collectively form part of an ongoing continuum—a relentless artistic drone that Picasso himself championed long ago—a continuity that continues to shape how art is created and perceived.
Eric Troncy, curator of the exhibition, reflects on Roland Barthes’ idea of Picasso’s Echo: a space where different forms and sensibilities coexist. The idea is captured by Troncy’s description of the show as a “poetic and wild journey,” where elephants and lions appear together in a single space to reveal new relationships between works. Picasso’s magnetic gaze is said to have opened minds and altered how viewers understand art and objects, influencing a broad spectrum of creators today. As one participant in the exhibition observes, many contemporary artists feel a Picasso presence in their own work, a sentiment echoed by Marina Faust, who notes in the catalog that a Picasso moment often appears in the life of every artist.
Photographs in the collection caption Echoes of Picasso with the image of the Malaga museum’s display floor, and the exhibition’s photography is attributed to Alex Zea. The ongoing dialogue between works—the direct echoes of Picasso and the fresh voices of today—invites visitors to see how the past conversation continues to shape the present. The curator emphasizes that some selections show explicit influence from Picasso, such as works by George Condo or Brian Calvin, while others emerge from subtler inspirations. There are also instances of direct copies and reinterpretations, including a piece titled Picasso’s Copy, which underscores how copying can become a form of conversation rather than mere replication. The Buenavista Palace galleries host these conversations, creating a space where new collaborations emerge and artists seek to transcend traditional influences to capture the spirit of a creator who remains unique and singular.
As Troncy explains, the aim is not to chase a single point of impact but to honor Picasso’s indispensability to artists across generations. The show intentionally moves away from forcing a singular narrative, focusing instead on how Picasso’s presence persists in diverse voices and practices. A simple aphorism from Picasso himself—never a dull moment in art—serves as a reminder that the conversation between critics and creators can diverge widely when discussing form, structure, and meaning, while practitioners in the studio often talk of where to source inexpensive turpentine. The message is clear: art remains a living dialogue, and Picasso’s echo continues to resonate in contemporary studios and galleries around the world.
“Pleasure”
Beyond a narrow selection, Echo of Picasso centers on emotion and surprise. It is an exhibition about pleasure: moments when a Picasso work confronts another masterpiece, such as a Bourgeois piece, and the resonance is undeniable. The show demonstrates how artists today are reworking Picasso’s vocabulary to reframe the present of art, inviting viewers to witness a dialogue with the master’s legacy. Works connected to this dialogue range from Jameson Green’s reinterpretations of Korean Massacre to a monumental four-meter minotaur by Thomas Houseago, pieces crafted to respond to Picasso’s influence rather than imitate it.
Almine Rech, co-chair of the Almine and Bernard Ruiz Picasso Art Foundation, joins the conversation with the conviction that Picasso’s essence lives on in the DNA of 21st-century creation. Her perspective reinforces the idea that the artist’s impact remains undiminished, even fifty years after his passing, and that contemporary works can feel like a continuation of Picasso’s artistic instinct. The sense is clear: the connections between 1881-born Picasso and 21st-century colleagues are not points of contrast but threads in the same fabric of creative impulse, stitched over time.
The exhibition’s approach is to spark discovery and invite a reconsideration of how influence travels. Rather than presenting a single, static portrait of Picasso, the show presents a living conversation—an unfolding map of shared energies, where the idea of inspiration travels, mutates, and expands as it encounters new voices. It is a space where the old coexist with the new, and where the aura of a historic figure can still feel immediate and urgent in the hands of contemporary artists.
In this atmosphere, the Malaga Museum’s design and curation emphasize the excitement of exploration. The experience is not about reverence alone; it is about immersion in a current of creativity that spans more than a century. Visitors leave with a sense that Picasso is not a relic but a living force whose ideas continue to shape how art is made and understood today. This is the core of the Echo of Picasso, a show that treats the artist as a seismic center around which modern and contemporary art has twisted and turned for decades.