Homage to Picasso in Spanish birthplace

Pablo Picasso adopted France as his home but was Spanish by birth and Spain is trumpeting the fact with a raft of events marking the 125th anniversary of the birth of this 20th century master.

"2005 was the year of Cervantes and Don Quixote in Spain and 2006 is the year of Picasso," said Bernardo Laniado-Romero, director at Malaga's Picasso Museum, though readily concedes his fame is so great "he does't really need such a commemoration."

The museum is showcasing some of the artist's most feted works through to June, including pieces not previously shown outside the Chateau Grimaldi Museum in Antibes, France, where Picasso made his immediate postwar home.

This year coincides with the 70th anniversary of Picasso's nomination as head of Madrid's renowned Prado Museum -- a post he never took up.

2006 also marks 25 years since the emotional return of the his iconic masterpiece "Guernica", a depiction of Picasso's horror over the Nazi bombing that destroyed a Basque village of the same name in northern Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

The Nazi regime was allied to the nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco, who would win the conflict with German help and rule Spain until his death in 1975.

The Prado and Madrid's other great art museum Reina Sofia, which now houses "Guernica", will jointly celebrate the anniversary of the picture's return from New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Picasso had refused to allow the work to be returned to Spain until after the dictator's death.

Spain has gone to great lengths to make the most of the anniversary and the celebration will be an "exceptional" event, promised Minister of Culture Carmen Calvo.

Cubist maestro Picasso (1881-1973) always maintained his Spanish nationality. He first went up to Paris in 1901 to breath the air of the capital of the avant-garde movement and ended up spending most of his life in France.

From 1939 until his death he never returned to Spain -- Franco died two years after the artist -- unlike another well-known contemporary, the surrealist Salvador Dali who did live in Spain during the dictatorship.

"He had proposals to come back but he did not want to betray the memory of his friends, their flesh and their soul, with Francoism," his daughter-in-law Christine Ruiz Picasso told AFP.

She explained that "in France, he was attached to all these exceptional creative figures who enriched his own works. And most of his (female) companions were French," she added.

But Spain always claimed the heritage of an artist it upheld as part of its "national glory", and the first Picasso Museum opened its doors in the northeastern city of Barcelona already in 1963.

The Catalan metropolis, where he had regularly spent time in his youth, is currently hosting a selection of his work.

It was Barcelona that served to inspire one of his leading cubist works -- the 1907 tableau "Ladies of Avignon" -- a portrait of prostitutes working the avenue that drew heavily from African inspiration.

Malaga, proud of its favourite son, opened its own Picasso Museum in 2003 and is now reaping the benefits of its association with the artist whose links here were long all but hidden.

"Pablo was always an Andalou, a 'Malagueno'", said regional government cultural affairs spokeswoman Rosa Ruiz Torres, who this week presented the "Picasso of Antibes" exhibition at the museum.

"Yes, he was Andalou, the 'toro' (bull) and death marked his work," said Ruiz Picasso.

"He liked Barcelona but he got angry when people dubbed him a Catalan painter," said his daughter-in-law, whose donations helped to get the museum off the ground.

But "to say he was this or that only serves to limit his universal genius. There are no frontiers for a personality such as Picasso," insisted Laniado-Romero.

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AFPLifestyle-art-Spain-Picasso

AFP 171202 GMT 03 06

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