“Picasso died here” is the name of a life-size figure of the painter at an art fair in Madrid. The painter’s hyper-realistic sculpture, lying in peace of mind, is a magnet for spectators, while the staging wants to draw attention to the exploitation of Picasso for tourist purposes.
The legendary Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso, whose death marks the 50th anniversary on April 8th, is the focus of this year’s ARCO Madrid Contemporary Art Fair. The 42nd edition was presented by the Spanish royal couple Felipe VI on Thursday. and Letizia opened. A hyper-realistic replica of Picasso’s “corpse”, wearing a striped blue and white shirt typical of the artist and laid out on a kind of tombstone, caused a lot of headlines and debates.
In addition to this sculpture, numerous other works by Picasso, who together with the Frenchman Georges Braque is considered the founder of Cubism, can be seen in the IFEMA exhibition center in the Spanish capital. There is no guest country at ARCO this year. The main theme is “The Mediterranean: A Round Sea”.
With his sensational sculpture “Aquí murió Picasso” (Picasso died here), the Spanish artist Eugenio Merino denounced the exploitation of the figure of the artist of the century for commercial and tourist purposes, especially in Picasso’s native city of Málaga. “Long queues of onlookers” quickly formed in front of the work, which is available for 45,000 euros, as the newspaper “El País” reported. Many took photos or even selfies with their cell phones. The newspaper La Vanguardia commented: “The surefire way to succeed on Instagram”.
For the time being, they were all invited guests, including politicians, art dealers, collectors and journalists, because the fair was not supposed to open to the general public until Friday. The organizers are expecting at least 90,000 to 100,000 visitors by Sunday. About as many (93,000) were last counted in February 2020, shortly before the outbreak of the corona pandemic.
A total of 211 galleries from three dozen countries are taking part in “ARCO 2023”. After host country Spain, Germany is the most represented with 29 galleries. Also taking part are the Munich gallery Jahn und Jahn, LEVY from Hamburg and Berlin, the Frankfurt gallery von Bärbel Grässlin, Jochen Hempel from Leipzig and Kadel Willborn from Düsseldorf.
