Las Meninas is a series of 58 paintings that Pablo Picasso painted in 1957 by performing a comprehensive analysis, reinterpreting and recreating several times Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez. The suite is fully preserved at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona and is the only complete series of the artist that remains together. This is a very extensive survey work, which consists of 45 performances of the original picture, 9 scenes of a dove, 3 landscapes, and a portrait of his second wife Jacqueline.
Picasso himself understood this series as a whole, and as such gave them to the museum in Barcelona in May 1968, in memory of Jaume Sabartés, who died the same year. Picasso's famous phrase said to Sabartés in 1950:
If someone want to copy Las Meninas, entirely in good faith, for example, upon reaching a certain point and if that one was me, I would say: what if you put them a little more to the right or left? I'll try to do it my way, forgetting about Velázquez. The test would surely bring me to modify or change the light because of having changed the position of a character. So, little by little, that would be a detestable Meninas for a traditional painter, but would be my Meninas.
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Exhibits
The Suite has been shown in the following exhibitions:
1959 - Les Menines, Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris.
1960 - Picasso, Tate Gallery, London.
1964 - Pablo Picasso. Exhibition Japan 1964, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan.
1964 - Pablo Picasso. Exhibition Japan 1964, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan.
1964 - Pablo Picasso. Exhibition Japan 1964, Nagoya City Art Museum, Japan.
1966 - 1967 - Hommage à Pablo Picasso, Grand Palais, Paris.
1967 - Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
1968 - Museu Picasso, Barcelona.
2008 - Forgetting Velázquez: Between 16 May and 28 September 2008, an exhibition at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which explains the influence of Velázquez and Picasso's work on other contemporary artists. The exhibition, divided into two sections, brought together works of the seventeenth century Spanish painters such as Velázquez, Juan Carreño de Miranda and Juan Bautista del Mazo, and some of the Las Meninas by Picasso next to more contemporary productions, with works by artists such as Francisco Goya, Michael Craig-Martin, Josep Maria Sert, Richard Hamilton and Thomas Struth. It was curated by Gertje Utley and Malén Gual.
However, there are several works from theSuite that have been part of other exhibitions, such as:
1980 - Picasso: A Retrospective, MoMA, Nova York.
1981 - Picasso 1881-1973. Exposición Antológica, Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid.
1985 - La peinture après 1940. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
1988 - Picasso in the Soviet Union. Pushkin Museum, Moscou
2006 - Picasso. Tradición y vanguardia. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
2008 - Picasso et les Maîtres. Grand Palais, Paris
2009 - Picasso: Challenging the past. National Gallery of London
2010 - Picasso: Peace and Freedom. Tate Liverpool
Other versions
Velázquez's Las Meninas has served as inspiration not only to Picasso. The first follower of Velazquez was certainly his son-in-law Juan Bautista del Mazo, court painter to Philip IV in 1661. In the portrait of the Infanta Margarita of Spain (1666), the placement of Charles II and the dwarf Mari Bárbola in the background recalls Las Meninas by Velazquez. Listed here are some other works of artists who have created versions of Las Meninas throughout art history:
Claudio Bravo, La vista
Herman Braun-Vega decided to work on Las Meninas after visiting Picasso Museum in Barcelona in 1968 :
Velázquez mis à nu accompagné des menines (1968), Museum of Antioquia
Velásquez Going to His Easel (From the series Velázquez Stripped Bare) (1968), Blanton Museum of Art
Les invités sur l'herbe d'après Vélasquez, Manet et Picasso (1970), Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris
¡Caramba! (Cézanne, Goya, Ingres, Matisse, Picasso, Rembrandt, Vélasquez) (1983), private collection
Il est interdit de s'arrêter (Velazquez) (1984), private collection
Hotel du Sud (Vélasquez, Ingres, Manet et Matisse) (1985), private collection
Dual insight into the West (Velazquez and Picasso) (1987), private collection
La familia Informal (Vélasquez, Goya, Picasso) (1992), Ralli Museum (Marbella)
Concierto en el mercado (Vélasquez) (1997), private collection