Bernard Plossu follows in the footsteps of Pablo Picasso in Barcelona thanks to the works preserved at the Museu Picasso. These are small prints of the city that the artist executed during his training stage (from 1895 to 1897) and which Bernard Plossu aims to reproduce through photography and Fresson charcoal print. Terraced roofs, architectural details, landscapes… Bernard Plossu paints a portrait of the city which served as a scene and model for the young Pablo Picasso.
Bernard Plossu has been pursuing poetry with the help of his photographs for more than fifty years. Born in Vietnam in 1945, he grew up in Paris, where his family moved when he was a child. In 1958, he went to the Sahara with his father, Albert Plossu, and took his first photos there with a Brownie Flash. He first stayed in Mexico in 1965 and 1966, with a brief interruption to go to California. In 1967, he came back in France, and decided to devote himself to photography. Since then, this tireless traveler has traveled the world to offer his own vision.
Since the 1970s, Bernard Plossu has used the Fresson print, a pigmentation process invented in the 19th century by members of the family of the same name, which gives the image a very particular texture and allows the photographer to distance his images from grandiloquence and the spectacular.
Bernard Plossu received, among other distinctions, the Grand Prix national de la Photographie (France) in 1988 and the PHotoEspaña prize (Spain) in 2013.
From 2019 to 2021, Bernard Plossu traveled the Catalan landscapes Pablo Picasso knew, so many places which are now considered to be essential in the artistic wealth of the man who one day revolutionized 20th century art. The exhibition brings together around sixty photos of strong visual intensity. They were taken in Horta de Sant Joan, Gósol, Cadaqués and Barcelona.
The poet Bernard Noël summed up with these words what Bernard Plossu had achieved by photographing the traces of Picasso:
“What are you going to do in the footsteps of Picasso, capture his visual imprint? This intrigues me a lot because it seems to me that you bring forth a presence, which is never represented but called upon. Few are those who know how to grasp the appeal of the thing and not the thing itself.”
Bernard Plossu : Picasso’s Catalan landscapes
1er mars – 15 septembre 2024
Museu Picasso
C/ de Montcada, 15-23, Ciutat Vella, 08003 Barcelona, Spain
www.museupicassobcn.cat
