Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga on 25^th October, 1881. 141 years have passed since then... And at the Museu Picasso we are celebrating with the opening of a space in the permanent collection dedicated to his father.

José Ruiz worked as a drawing teacher and painter in the three cities where the Ruiz Picasso family lived; in Málaga, in A Coruña and, finally, in Barcelona. In 1880 he married María Picasso López, with whom he would have three children; one of them, Pablo Picasso. Don José would play a fundamental role in the formation of his son; he acted as a guide in his learning of painting and imposed a very rigorous preparation programme on him. 

Pablo Picasso. The artist’s father. Watercolour on paper. Barcelona, 1896. Pablo Picasso Donation, 1970. MPB 110.331

Jaume Sabartés summed up the importance of the father in Picasso's artistic vocation with the following phrase: «[…] from him comes the fondness for painting and […] he is the one who gave him his first lessons.»

Picasso painted a large number of portraits of Don José in a series of works with different formats and techniques, ink, graphite pencil or watercolour, and many of them can be seen in this space, starting on Tuesday, 25^th October. The room is dominated by an oil painting with a dovecote, done by José Ruiz in A Coruña between 1891 and 1895. It is known that José liked to paint doves - this large-format work is a good example of it, and that Picasso inherited the predilection of his father. The Dovecote completes the collection of doves and pigeons that are kept in the Museum; the lithographs in the collection are numerous and the Las Meninas series includes doves with very free strokes.

José Ruiz Blasco. Dovecote. Oil on canvas. 1891-1895. Deposit from the FUNDACIÓ NOGUERA

Pablo Picasso. The dove. Lithography. Wash and lithographic ink on zinc; printed on Arches vellum paper (Sabartés proof). 9th January 1949. Jaume Sabartés Donation, 1962. MPB 70.106

The Dovecote is a deposit from the Noguera Foundation which, with this generous action, supports the Museum's activity in the preparatory events for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the artist's death.