Prologue

It is 1926. We are in Paris, where a journey begins. Our journey takes us backwards in time. It is a story without a climax, a plot or a happy ending, but it is a story that tells the key moments in the careers of Picasso, Miró and Dalí. Our story opens with a point of arrival: Dalí's visit to Picasso in Paris in 1926. From here we embark on a sequence that carries us back in time. In his memoirs, Dalí links his visit to Picasso to the fir st time he met Miró, his compatriot in the Surrealist group in Paris. Through this link we enter the space shared by Miró and Dalí in the first half of the 1920s. The question of genius loci in Miró and Dalí offers us the key to explore an even earlier moment: when Miró crossed paths with Picasso in Barcelona in 1917. The Picasso who returned to Barcelona with Parade in 1917 is very different from the Picasso who, ten years earlier, 'invented' a picture called Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in Paris in 1907. Yet knowing the Picasso of 1917 gives us a unique key to understanding the sketchbooks in which he developed his Cubist masterpiece, in particular Cahier 7. The journey ends with the fifteen year-old Picasso, still heavily influenced by the art of the 19th century, exploring his own origins, in search of transformation. Paradoxically, the end is also a beginning: the visitor will leave the exhibition with a renewed appreciation of the impact of Picasso's genius on Miró, Dalí and on modernity itself.

Apollo Liceo