Pablo Picasso, Tête d'homme de profil/Head of a Man in Profile, December 13 1970. Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Madrid.
© Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025.
Photo: Marc Domage © FABA

Velázquez, El Greco & late Picasso

lecture and conversation

9.12 2025

Stockholm

How did Diego Velázquez and El Greco inspire Pablo Picasso’s late works? Hear Javier Barón, Senior Curator at the Prado Museum in Madrid, discuss how the artistic language and expression of the old masters influenced Picasso in his final years. The lecture is followed by a conversation between Javier Barón and Jo Widoff, curator of “Late Picasso” and Head of Collection at Moderna Museet.

Velázquez, El Greco & Late Picasso

Lecture and conversation

Date

Tuesday 9 December 2025

Time

17.30–19

Place

The Cinema, floor 2

Language

English

Price

Free of charge, pre-registration required. Would you like to visit the exhibition in connection with the lecture? Purchase an entrance ticket and select the date and time of your visit

Contact: Alexander Kateb, Moderna Museet

In his final years, Picasso (1881–1973) summoned a cast of flamboyant male figures – musketeers, cavaliers, and pipe-smoking swordsmen – who both pay tribute to, and play with, early modern painting. Inspired by Velázquez (1599–1660) and El Greco (1541–1614) among others, these figures wear ruffled collars and wield swords, yet their puffed-up posturing often slips into parody and self-ridicule. Behind the bravado lies a knowing sense of play – these are not portraits in any conventional sense; they are roles to be performed.

Javier Barón opens with a lecture introducing paintings of Velázquez and El Greco, showing how their artistic language and expression influenced Picasso’s late works. The lecture is followed by a conversation between Javier Barón and Jo Widoff, curator of “Late Picasso” and Head of Collection at Moderna Museet. Together, they continue the discussion on these art historical dialogues and the ways in which they are manifested in the exhibition.

Javier Barón

Since 2003, Javier Barón has served as the Head of Conservation of 19th Century Painting at the Prado Museum in Madrid. He completed his doctorate in Art History in 1989 with an extraordinary award from the University of Oviedo, where he later became a professor. In 2011 he was a fellow at the Clark Art Institute of Williamstown (Massachusetts, US).

At the Prado, he has prepared and organised exhibitions on Turner, Fortuny, Renoir and Sorolla, as well as other exhibitions dealing with the diffusion of the art of the old masters in contemporary painting, such as “El Greco and Modern Painting” (2014). He wrote the book “El Greco et les Modernes” (Paris, Cohen & Cohen, 2019).

He is a member of the Board of Qualification and Evaluation of Works of Art of the City Council of Madrid, and of the Board of Trustees of the Sorolla Museum. Barón is also a correspondent member of the Spanish Royal Academy of History and the Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In 2017 he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Republic.

LATE PICASSO

The exhibition “Late Picasso” is the first major presentation of Pablo Picasso at Moderna Museet in more than thirty years. Here, the artist appears in his last years – from 1963 until his death in 1973. During these years, Picasso’s style became increasingly expressive and uncompromising. His late works combined two distinct ways of painting: one quick and simplified, made up of abbreviations and codified signs; the other bold and expressive, with thick, flowing paint hastily applied.

“Late Picasso” brings together approximately fifty paintings and thirty works on paper. Alongside loans from other collections, the exhibition also features paintings and prints from Moderna Museet’s own holdings.