Picasso's Dialogue with El Greco and Goya in Two Madrid Exhibitions

Two Madrid museums, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and the Museo del Prado, are presenting exhibitions that explore Pablo Picasso's debt to Spanish old masters. At San Fernando, "Goya/Picasso. Tauromachie" (curated by Victor Nieto) displays for the first time all 33 original copper plates of Francisco Goya's Tauromaquia series (first printed in 1816) alongside contemporary prints and seven additional plates added posthumously in 1876. The exhibition also features 26 prints plus a drypoint cover Picasso made between 1957 and 1959 to illustrate José Delgado's (Pepe-Illo) 1796 treatise on bullfighting, commissioned by Gustavo Gill Roig in the 1920s. At the Prado, "Picasso/El Greco and Analytic Cubism" (curated by Carmen Giménez) juxtaposes nine works by El Greco with four Cubist paintings by Picasso from the Beyeler Foundation, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, and Guggenheim Museum New York, arguing that El Greco's anticlassical style influenced Picasso's analytic cubism beyond the Blue Period. Both institutions have historical ties to Picasso: the Prado appointed him director (1936–1939, a role he never assumed) and San Fernando made him honorary academician in 1971. The exhibitions run until September 3 and September 17, 2023, respectively.