About Barcelona

Homenatge a Picasso (Tribute to Picasso in Barcelona)

In 1981, catalan artist Antoni Tàpies was commissioned by the Barcelona City Council to create a monument to Picasso, which was unveiled in 1983 at the Passeig de Picasso in the pedestrian area that links with Ciutadella Park.
This Homenatge a Picasso (Tribute to Picasso) is a sculpture inside a glass cube measuring 4 meters along each side that covers the sculpture and protect it from the elements, surrounded by a square pool measuring 11 meters along each edge that acts as a base. The water emerges from the top of the cube and runs down its sides partially distorting the image of the inside.
For the inside of the glass cube the artist designed an assemblage of pieces of Modernist furniture; a sofa, mirror and cupboard combined, cut through iron beams painted white. It was the intention to remind the period that Picasso spent living in Barcelona and suggests the industrial Barcelona of the time, and the fight between the conformist nature of a well-to-do society and the rebellion of another society in the throes of change, thereby alluding in a symbolic way to Picasso’s non-conformism. Everything tied together with ropes and white blankets with a quotation by Picasso at the bottom with the phrase that reads “a painting is not intended to decorate a drawing room but is instead a weapon of attack and defense against the enemy”, a declaration of principles that Tàpies adopts as his own in this monument and in his entire work.
It is the poetry of the artist, but the result keeps being difficult to appreciate as the water flowing from the walls distorts the vision and creates a mystery on what it is inside. Even more a restoration was needed in 2006 as the high concentration of calcium in the water falling from the glass walls made practically impossible to see the inside.