The Nativity Scene by Pablo Picasso and Miquel Barceló

AlmeríaMiquel Barceló doesn't make many hierarchies between artistic disciplines or historical periods. He considers ceramics to be "the mother of painting," and starting this Tuesday, 58 of his ceramics will be in dialogue with 36 by Picasso and 33 archaeological pieces from the Museum of Almería in the exhibition Reflections. Picasso x BarcelóThe highlight of the exhibition in Almería is an ingenious "nativity scene-theater," as Barceló himself describes it, depicting a Nativity. He assembled it himself on Monday morning, "deconstructing" the work done by the museum team, as its director, Tania Fábrega, wryly puts it. In fact, for the past 30 years, Barceló has created a nativity scene every year with his children, using figurines he has made himself. "I brought pieces from my workshop that were fragments, unfinished works, and figurines, and we combined them with the others without identifying who made them. It's very beautiful, because often there's a Picasso bull, a small bull of mine, and a Phoenician one, and they're made with the same or similar gestures, with very similar clay, and fired just barely. One is from Pompeii two thousand years ago, another was made in Palma, and one was made by your mother," the artist explains.

And among the pieces of the nativity scene-theater there is a small first: a discarded fragment of the model of the Relief for the atrium of the Glory façade of the Sagrada Familia which he delivered a few days ago. It's an undulating surface featuring three nude female figures, upon which now sits a small statuette of Aphrodite. "The Sagrada Família project has a theological committee, and the theme is very specific: paradise, the paradise of Glory," says the artist. "It's a competition, so, for the moment, I'm far from being able to say I'll do it, but it would be fun." The winner of the competition, in which Cristina Iglesias and Javier Marín are also participating, is expected to be chosen during the first months of 2026. Barceló defines himself as "agnostic" and has another major religious commission underway: two tapestries for Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. "The Archbishop of Paris told me that someone guides my hand, and I thought I would love for that to be true; I would like to be a believer because the feeling I have is one of absolute chaos," Barceló concludes.

Part of the works of Reflections. Picasso x Barceló They are displayed together on a large table conceived as an "archaeology of the future," says Miguel López-Remiro, artistic director of the Picasso Museum in Málaga and curator of the Almería exhibition along with Tania Fábrega and Laura Esparragosa, the directors, respectively, of the Almería Museum and the Cádiz Museum, which hosted the exhibition. Among them are the oldest ceramics in the exhibition, dating back 7,600 years, fish and shattered jugs by Barceló, and a tadpole wearing a tricorn hat and engraved jugs by Picasso. The remaining pieces, before reaching the nativity scene-theater, are distributed across four small thematic sections dedicated, respectively, to the female figure, the archaic period, animals, bullfighting, and bulls as mythological creatures.

"For Picasso, ceramics constitute not only a way to multiply his message, but also a privileged means of articulating tradition and innovation, memory and modernity, and for Barceló, ceramics represents a territory of exploration where the ancestral, the corporeal, and the experimental converge," says López-Remiro.

Reflections. Picasso x BarcelóIt is a project conceived and carried out in collaboration with Miquel Barceló, the Picasso Museum in Málaga, and the Almine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Foundation, with sponsorship from the Unicaja Foundation and the collaboration of the Andalusian Regional Government's Ministry of Culture and Sport. The exhibition's origins lie in the daily conversations Miquel Barceló had with Bernard Picasso. "We were surprised to see the extent to which these pieces speak to each other, like a small figurine that is 3,000 or 4,000 years old next to a seated woman by Picasso. It seems as if they were made by the same hands, as if Picasso made both, or as if a Neolithic artist made Picasso's. And if everything remained like Pompeii, in five thousand years archaeologists would think the entire exhibition is the work of a single artist. They are made for the same reasons, by the same fingers, and with the same impulse, and it will continue to be so, because art is a human need, like defecating and making love," Barceló emphasizes.

Barceló has always liked Picasso, although if he had to choose, he would stick with Joan Miró's ceramics. "Picasso interests me a lot as an artist," says Barceló, "since I was 13, I've read and studied him, and I've never stopped. Just as there are artists I liked when I was a teenager and then stopped liking, I've always found a way to return to Picasso. Even as a human attitude."

From Mali to the ravages of tourism in Mallorca

Barceló began making ceramics in Mali using techniques "typical of the Neolithic period." "I was lucky enough to start making ceramics relatively early; other artists like Picasso, Miró, and Fontana began when they were around sixty years old," says Barceló. It all started when he was doing a residency in Mali and a wind prevented him from painting. "I'm an accidental ceramist," he remarks. In Mallorca, the place where Barceló makes his ceramics is an old brickyard in Vilafranca de Bonany. Among other things, there are large brick structures reminiscent of the talayots. "I like dry stone walls, as if each stone were the head of one of the island's inhabitants, so it's as if each islander's head were a brick. I like to think that the brickyard is transformed into something else, and each brick acquires another identity," says the artist.

Barceló often manipulates the bricks by punching them. On the other hand, he sees these bricks as a symbol of the urban devastation wrought by tourism since the second half of the 20th century. "The tourism industry and real estate speculation transformed potteries that made tiles and flowerpots into brick factories. Every day they produced many cubic meters of horror—walls, apartments, things—purely for speculation," Barceló explains. "Apricot trees, vineyards, tomato fields, winter pastures, vegetable gardens. There wasn't a single square meter that wasn't cared for and controlled. It's been razed: everything is overcrowded brick warehouses, rubble, waste..." Thus, where everything is filth and sometimes toxic waste, Barceló tries to give it "another meaning." "The tourism industry is similar to the drug industry: no one controls it, it's always expanding, and it ends up contaminating everything," the artist concludes.