Descripción
Miquel and Juan Gaspar, through Picasso’s friends Jaume Sabartés and Juan Vidal Ventosa, visited him in Cannes on 10 November 1955. This meeting gave rise to a great friendship that made Picasso a more frequent and regular visitor to Barcelona, since at that time the Master’s works were beginning to be exhibited at the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona, with all the risks that this entailed for its owners and the courage that it took to oppose the boycott of the government authorities.
At that time, an event of this nature entailed, both for the Gallery and for its owners, all kinds of risks, repercussions and harassment by the authorities and supporters of the regime, who were irritated by any demonstration in favour of the painter and applied a series of dissuasive measures against anyone who dared to exhibit his work or write about him. Given his status as a banned artist due to enmity with the Franco regime, he was condemned to exile and his official status was practically nil. Proof of this was the looting and vandalism suffered many years later by the Theo Gallery in Madrid when it organised a complete exhibition of the fascinating “Vollard Suite”.
The first exhibition at the Sala Gaspar was held in 1955. In addition to works by Picasso, works by Villon, Léger and Chagall were also exhibited. Later, and with the same courage, they organised another exhibition of thirty-nine Picasso lithographs in 1956. And again in 1957 a major exhibition organised by the exceptional art dealer Kahnweiler was a great success.
Despite the difficulties and dangers involved in these exhibitions, the Gaspar brothers continued them in the following years. This poster corresponds specifically to the exhibition held in 1960 for which Picasso made this lithograph with a handwritten text. Among other novelties, this exhibition displayed for the first time ‘Tauromaquia de Pepe-Hillo’, a book on bullfighting illustrated by Picasso commissioned by another brave Spanish businessman, Gustavo Gili.
Jaume Sabartés, commenting on the request of his friends the Gaspars that he write a text on Picasso’s work for the catalogue that was to carry on its cover a lithograph done in a language similar to that of this poster, said that “Picasso’s work must be seen: trying to explain it is something like wanting to impose an opinion and get ahead of the desire to see and appreciate, admire or reject without warning”. And later in the same text, as we have said, he adds: “Picasso’s work, as I understand it, speaks loud and clear for itself”.
