jetjunkies

March 7, 2026

A friend that lives in our building in Portland told us about Malaga, Picasso’s home town. She mentioned a small museum with his early drawings. The port city sounded inconsequential. Well, the museum is substantial with a chronological exhibit of Picasso’s development as an artist. Fascinating if you enjoy art and the process.

Picasso had an unending passion and curiosity for creating art with different mediums, painting, ceramics, bronze castings, painted wood, etching, lithography, woodcuts, linocuts and more.

“Picasso’s overwhelming creative energy, combined with the availability and efficiency of the Crommelynck brothers, resulted in a huge output of work. This professional relationship was combined with a strong friendship which is evident from the portraits that the artist painted of Piero and his family.”

During the Spanish war and WWII, Picasso was in France and depicted conditions through painting a single rare piece of fruit on a table. There was a pervading darkness in his work.

“To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all.”

Pablo Picasso, 1923

Picasso was intrigued with African art, of which he had a substantial collection. It greatly influenced his development of cubism.

As Picasso said, “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.” This understanding enabled him to explore the artifice of all artistic practice by uniting the apparently opposing styles of cubism and classical.

Towards the end of his life Picasso organized an exhibition of 201 paintings he had made during the years 1970-73. It opened six weeks after his death on April 8, 1973.

After the museum we were hungry and decided to head to a Chinese restaurant in the port area of Malaga. The city has a population of around 600,000, it’s beautiful and very fashionable.

Street entertainment ranged from break dancing and musicians to costumed characters.

El Cubo appeared to be empty at the time of our visit, but it is amazingly striking all by itself.

Our Chinese food, which we’ve been craving for weeks was everything we dreamed of….

In the evening of our first night, we went out. Our hotel was located in a strictly pedestrian area and we walked in from our taxi. We only took weekend type bags and left most of our things in our Cádiz apartment, so the trek wasn’t too bad.

Calle Marqués de Larios is Malaga’s most elegant and bustling shopping street with shops from Paris, Japan, Italy, England and the US. The red carpet is in honor of Malaga’s Film Festival.

We are hoping to return to Malaga in the future to spend more time exploring. Two days is definitely not enough.

Back to Cádiz tomorrow…