CADIZ.- After its showing at the Museo de Almería, where it received an extraordinary reception from the public and critics following its inauguration in December, the exhibition Reflections. Picasso x Barceló now heads for Western Andalusia, specifically the Museo de Cádiz, where it can be seen from 26 March to 28 June 2026.

This project, which brings together more than one hundred works by Pablo Picasso and Miquel Barceló, as well as objects from the archaeological collections of both Andalusian museums, offers a unique encounter between tradition and innovation, memory and modernity. After its showing in Almería (16 December 2025 to 15 March 2026), the Mediterranean city that was the exhibition's starting point, Cádiz—gateway to the A tlantic and a cultural meeting point over the centuries—becomes the new setting for this artistic dialogue between styles and eras.

Reflections. Picasso is an initiative that began in December 2024 in the city of Granada, where the artist’s work was presented alongside that of Jeff Koons at the Museo de Granada. This new edition, Reflections. Picasso x Barceló, is a project conceived and undertaken in collaboration with Miquel Barceló, the Museo Picasso Málaga and the Fundación Almine y Be rnard Ruiz-Picasso, with the sponsorship of Fundación Unicaja and the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture and Sport.

The Picasso Reflections project is part of a broader initiative to strategically expand the presence of the Museo Picasso Málaga throughout Andalusia, creating new opportunities to reinterpret the artist’s work from contemporary perspectives. Each edition offers a unique encounter that allows viewers to see Picasso from new perspectives and with fresh resonances, opening up his work to other genealogies and temporalities.

After the success of Reflections. Picasso x Koons, presented at the Alhambra and the Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada (December 2024 to March 2025), this new edition, Reflections. Picasso x Barceló, now offers an exceptional opportunity to discover - first in Almería and now in Cadiz - the connections between the work of the Mallorcan artist and the legacy of Picasso, in addition to connections with objects from the past housed in both museums.

The unique aspect of this exhibition project is that it establishes a dialogue between Pablo Picasso and Miquel Barceló through one of the oldest and most universal artistic mediums: ceramics. The two artists’ works are presented alongside the archaeological collections of both museums, establishing a trans-historical intersection in which prehistoric, ancient, medieval, and contemporary clay modelling practices find common ground.

The exhibition also invites visitors to appreciate a constant echo of Picasso in the work of Barceló : an experimental attitude, a continuous reinvention from tradition, and a shared desire for dialogue with ancient and modern art.

THE ART OF FIRE

Since the dawn of humanity, clay and fire have come together to produce ceramics, one of the oldest and most significant of all inventions. With the first pots, humans found a way to conserve water, store grain and cook food: humble objects that transformed daily life and ensured the survival of communities.

In addition, functional pieces soon became bearers of symbols: they were decorated with geometric motifs, animals and scenes from daily life, becoming witnesses to beliefs, rituals and ways of imagining the world. Moulded by hand, clay became a medium of memory. Trade disseminated ceramics along land and sea routes, taking pitchers, amphorae and bowls from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. Each object travelled filled with oils, wine or spices but also transported styles, techniques and knowledge that interacted in ports and markets. As a result, ceramics became the art of transforming earth, water and fire into objects that were both functional and transcendent, in constant dialogue with the lives of communities.

Reflections. Picasso x Barceló proposes an understanding of ceramics as a universal language that connects the functional and the transcendent, the everyday and the symbolic. The exhibition highlights the ongoing presence of clay as a material of memory and experimentation, placing both artists within a Mediterranean genealogy of creators who have transformed earth, water and fire into enduring art over the centuries.

GEOGRAPHIES OF CLAY: VALLAURIS AND MALI

For Picasso, ceramics became an essential laboratory of ideas after World War II. In Vallauris he discovered clay as a ductile medium that allowed him to combine painting, sculpture and objects, transforming plates, jugs and vessels into human bodies, mythological beings and everyday scenes while connecting with the ceramic traditions of Andalusia and the Mediterranean.

Miquel Barceló came to ceramics in the 1990s, during the time he spent in Mali. There he learned ancestral techniques from the Dogon community and turned an accident into a revelation: ceramics became a territory of exploration in which the ritual, the corporeal and the experimental converge. His works bear the marks of the physicalprocess, becoming living surfaces that retain the energy of the moment.
The exhibition, sponsored by Fundación Unicaja, is curated by Miguel López-Remiro, artistic director of the Museo Picasso Málaga; Laura Esparragosa, director of the Museo de Cádiz; and Tania Fábrega, director of the Museo de Almería.

Miguel López-Remiro has noted that while for Picasso, “ceramics constitute not only a way of multiplying his message, but also a privileged way of articulating tradition and innovation, memory and modernity", for Barceló, ceramics are "an exploratory territory in which the ancestral, the corporeal and the experimental converge." López-Remiro also points out that “the shift from Almería to Cadiz introduces a change in the interpretation of the project: from the stratigraphic depths of the Mediterranean to the openness of the Atlantic as a space of circulation and encounter. Two geographies, two ways of relating to material, that allow us to understand ceramics not only as origin, but also as transit.” He adds that “in this route, the exhibition is configured as a system of reflections, not in the sense of reproduction but as a movement of repetition and difference, where past, present and possible futures come together on a single surface.”

For her part, Laura Esparragosa has explained that “In the Museo de Cádiz, the works of Picasso and Barceló engage in a dialogue with the archaeological ceramics, as if they shared a common pulse through time." Esparragosa also highlights the setting in which this new edition of Reflections. Picasso will take place, surrounded by other Old Masters: “Rather than a contrast, it is a conversation joined by works by Murillo and Zurbarán from the Fine Arts collection, acknowledging that shared sensibility, turning the site into a space in which ceramics and painting seek each other out, listen to each other and understand each other across the centuries.”

A JOURNEY FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN TO THE ATLANTIC

Located in the archaeological contexts of Almería and Cadiz, Picasso and Barceló’s works establish a dialogue with Neolithic vessels, Phoenician and Roman amphorae, Islamic ceramics and fragments of thousands of years of history. Thematic resonances emerge that traverse the ages: the human and animal form as archetypes, fire as a transformative force, fragility as resilience, and the processes of fragmentation and recomposition as a testament of time. Then there is also the sea; the shared soul of these two cities which has acted as a conduit of memory, fusion and artistic creation between different civilizations thanks to maritime trade.

The exhibition embarked on its itinerary in December at the Museo de Almería, where it was met with an exceptionally warm response from the visiting public. Founded in 1933 and reopened in 2006, the museum is housed in a contemporary building and has one of the most important ceramics collections in Spain, with objects spanning more than five thousand years, from the Neolithic period to contemporary production. Its museological design, structured around the stratigraphic column, allows visitors to understand the cultural evolution of southeastern Spain through material from sites such as Los Millares and El Argar.

The exhibition has now arrived at the Museo de Cádiz, located on the historic Plaza de Mina since 1935 and declared a Site of Cultural Interest, a key place for an understanding of the city's history and art. The collection is organised into three areas: Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Ethnography. Highlights include Phoenician sarcophagi, Roman sculptures, Baroque paintings by Zurbarán and Murillo, as well as the unique collection of puppets formerly belonging to the Tía Norica company. In its entirety, the museum presents a wide-ranging collection that reflects the cultural identity of Cadiz from antiquity to the present day.

This transition from Eastern Andalusia to Western Andalusia, from Mediterranean light to the rhythm of the Atlantic, accentuates the geographical and symbolic significance of the project: two seas, two landscapes and two traditions that meet in the work of Picasso and Barceló.

THE CATALOGUE AND ASSOCIATED ACTIVITIES

In conjunction with the exhibition Reflections: Picasso x Barceló the Museo Picasso Málaga has published a comprehensive catalogue featuring texts by the curatorial team comprising Laura Esparragosa, Tania Fábrega and Miguel López-Remiro. The 164-page catalogue, available in both Spanish and English, is richly illustrated with photographs of both the exhibited works and the artists' studios. It can be purchased atthe Manuel de Falla bookshop, located on the Plaza de Mina number 2, next to the Museo de Cádiz, and at the Museo Picasso Málaga bookshop, as well as online at https://tienda.museopicassomalaga.org/

To accompany the opening of the exhibition in the city of Cadiz, the Museo Picasso Málaga has organised an encounter between Miquel Barceló and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso (grandson of Pablo Picasso and president of the Executive Council of the Museo Picasso Málaga, as well as president of the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso por el Arte–FABA–), in which José María Luna, director of Cultural Activities at Fundación Unicaja, and the exhibition’s curators Laura Esparragosa and Miguel López-Remiro will also participate. The event will take place at 6 pm in the auditorium of the Centro Cultural Fundación Unicaja in Cadiz, located at Calle San Francisco, number 26. Admission is free until all seats are filled.

During the month of April, the Museo de Cádiz will be offering a special programme of activities associated with the exhibition Reflections. Picasso x Barceló, devised to encourage an enjoyment of art from different perspectives and for all sectors of the public. Taking place

on Wednesday 15 April, the workshop “Reflections and Resonances: from the museum to personal creation” is an activity aimed at adults in which clay becomes a vehicle for personal expression and creativity: a sensory experience that invites participants to explore forms, symbols and emotions. The programme continues with a specialised tour on Saturday 18 April which focuses on ceramics as living cultural heritage, and a workshop for children on Sunday 19 April in which participants can experiment with paint and clay, inspired by the emotions aroused by the work of art. Finally, on Sunday 26 April there will be an archaeodance performance, combining movement, tradition and contemporary art and offering a participatory experience in different spaces of the museum.

All activities take place at the Museo de Cádiz. Information on booking and the programme for May and June will be posted soon on the museum's website and social media.

Reflections. Picasso x Barceló is a project conceived and undertaken in collaboration with Miquel Barceló, the Museo Picasso Málaga and the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, with the sponsorship of Fundación Unicaja and the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture and Sport.