Picasso places in Horta de Sant Joan

The Hostal del Trompet

In the Plaza de Misa was the Hostal del Trompet, where Picasso and Fernande Olivier stayed the summer of 1909.

In this second room, her companion Manuel Pallares did not accompany her and her mother did not let her stay at her house because Picasso and Fernande were not married. That is why they stay at the Trompet hostel, run by Antonio Altes.

One of the best-known anecdotes is the one that explains that Picasso went out on the balcony to scare some Puritan women from the town who made a fuss because the couple were not married, which for the time was inconceivable.

The study

Picasso, in his second stay, immersed in what has become a new artistic movement, locked himself in a studio that left him in the attic of the house his friend Tobías Membrado, the baker.

This study is located in the same church square. The painting that starts here is about a more mental than non-sensory work, that is, it does not copy what it sees but it deforms, enhances and cuts what is before it.

The works he paints in Horta are decisive in marking Cubism as we know it today. When leaving, Picasso gave two paintings to Tobias.

Of these works of art, nothing has ever been known, probably, without foreseeing what the painting of these times could represent, they were thrown away or parked in an attic.

The Plaza de la Balsa and the Factory

Picasso returns to Horta in 1909 and spends four months. He does so accompanied by Fernande Olivier and a camera that immortalized the first images of Horta.

La Bassa, what is now Plaza de Cataluña, was a place that collected rainwater where animals watered on the outskirts of the town and where there were mills of oil and flour. Picasso, in this second visit, invented what he immediately called cubism. From the square and looking towards the top of the town, Picasso sees in Horta the geometric drawing that inspires him to paint paintings such as the factory and the raft.

City Hall

Aware of what Picasso represented, the City Council dedicated a street to his name in 1967 and they called him Horta's adopted son. Two years later, the mayor of the time and the pharmacist decided to visit Picasso to thank him for everything he had done for Horta.

At 87 years old, after 60 years of his second visit to Horta, Picasso decided that he would give some of his works so that they could be exhibited in some space in the town. The two visitors returned to Horta very excited and went to work and adapt the loft of the City to expose the works. Picasso delegated everything to his friend Pallarés and it was his son who prevented this exhibition from taking place.

With the death of Picasso in 1974 and that of Pallarés the following year, Horta lost the opportunity to have the "Museo Picasso- Pallares".

The bar

Picasso and La Fernande also interact with people from Horta and participate in local customs and traditions. They met at night in the tavern of Joaquin Antonio Vives to play the domino. They used to be seen there until dawn.

Fernande was also going and that was a scandal for the time. In addition Fernande used to win enough games and earned money that Horta could not spend on anything as reflected in one of the many letters that the young French girl sent to her friends.

The Picasso Center

In 1992, the Picasso Center was inaugurated as a museum, hosting different facsimile works by Picasso. Little by little they have been recovering different exhibitions and works that correspond to the stages of learning, evocations and cubist with the aim of showing the strong affective and plastic links between the artist and Horta de San Juan.

Santa Babara

The Santa Bárbara mountain was the first place to which Picasso and Manuel Pallarès were as soon as they arrived in Horta, at the end of June 1898. In a cave in the mountain a few days passed, probably there they decided to spend August, in the Ports where the young painter recovers. The mountain of Santa Barbara was painted by Picasso in both the first and second rooms, when he made several cubist visions.

One of the first paintings that Picasso painted during his second stay in Horta was a cubist painting of the Santa Bárbara mountain, triangular in shape and presiding over one of the most visible landscapes from the town.

The mountain and the convent that we can see at their feet are an emblematic architectural and sentimental level for the people of Horta besides being an inescapable point of visit for all those who pass through the town.

After ten years, he returns a second time and returns to this space to project Fernande's sexuality on this mountain.

The convent of San Salvador

The Convent of San Salvador, at the foot of the Santa Bárbara mountain, was also painted by Picasso. We emphasize the oil The procession to the convent.

The Picasso Cave

In the first visit of Picasso in Horta, the young Picasso and Pallarès enter the area of ​​the Ports and enable a cave that served as a refuge for the shepherds as a lodging place.

With four groceries and some canvases to paint nature they spend a month living in an almost wild state. Pallarés was a great connoisseur of the territory and watched over both during those days in the Ports. Picasso never forgot that experience and his friendship with Manuel lasted 75 years.

From the space they occupied as a bed, nowadays there is a small path that crosses forest and a stream that revive and imagine the experience that changed the painter's genius.

More of Taffetas

In the Mas de Tafetanes, Picasso and his friend spent a few days during the wheat harvest. Picasso painted an oil painting of the small house and made several drawings and sketches of the working farmers.

City Council of Horta de Sant Joan