Barcelona - MEAM (Museu Europeu d'Art Modern)

We kind of overslept, grabbed a quick bite and headed out.

We decided to have a chocolate croissant and a crème croissant and share them both.
Foiled, it was buy one, 2nd for free. Therefore 2 chocolate croissant today and tomorrow,
2 crème croissant.

We had planned on going to the Picasso Museum but on the way wandered into the market, Mercat de Santa Caterina, that we had passed yesterday when it was closed.

This stall was almost entirely tomatoes.

Salt fish

Fresh fish

So much ham and sausage hanging up that you can't even see the server.

We sat at a bar in the market and had our first coffee in a glass.

The lineup for the Picasso Museum was huge again and we had just passed the Museum of Modern Art, which we were both interested in, so we decided to give it a try instead. There was no lineup, actually while we were in there, about 2 hours, we only saw 5 other people.

The museum is housed in an 18th century palace and we began in the courtyard with
sculptures, greenery and some places to sit.  It was opened in 2011 and specializes in realism

One floor was dedicated almost entirely to the artist Golucho. He worked in
paint and in pencil and we at first thought we were looking at photos.

Golucho used ordinary people for his models, often elderly,  but
also children and some recurring people.

Elderly skin is made to look even more realistic by wrinkling the paper itself
and small rips that let the wood background show through.

".... we must find expressiveness to our times, we must achieve a language to create a genuine art of our century ....we live at the cost of feats of other eras ..... we have not yet achieved, however, a genuine art, independent of the past, and of which we can feel proud."

Every now and then we had to stop and refocus on ceilings and walls that were
also beautiful.

By Luis Rizzo Rey
The focus on realism usually meant the human form. Lots of beautiful nude
women but also fat, hairy middle aged men, old women and a smattering
of fallen angels and mythological creatures.

By Andre Garcia
Some animals. This horse had just been ridden, you could see where he was still
damp with sweat, scratching his ear against the wall.

By Carlos Marijuan
I love that you can see the drool on his chin.

"For the artist, the creative act does not lie so much in the way of using the brush ..... but more in the capacity to conceive great works. This is why our period is crumbling away ...... because men do not emerge with sufficient originality to drag us away from tedium and return meaning to our lives."
We asked the ticket seller who had written the quotes (I have reproduced only a small segment) and were told it was the director of the Museu.

By Luciano Ventrone. Seriously, they are not photographs.

By Carlos Marijuan. We both loved the painting of the "selfie"

By Abraham Zazo
There were lots of realistic sculptures but this was the most unusual, made
of 1000s of sheets of paper laid on top of each other.

We both loved this gallery and decided we had seen Picasso in the Ceret Art Museum, maybe we didn't need to see him again and walked towards Las Ramblas.

Sweet ham, tomato and cheese crepe for lunch.

A cow gargoyle on the back of the cathedral

and a unicorn gargoyle.

The cathedral. We didn't go in but sat in awe of the intricate carving
and windows from the outside.

Just to give you some idea, some detail work from the cathedral.

Beside the cathedral we went past the remains of a roman aqueduct and through
what was once the gate into the city, then this ornate bridge across.

Another gargoyle. Getting a little obsessive here.

We ended up in Placa Reial for a glass of wine.

We finally reached Las Ramblas and strolled with the hordes of people up, past the stalls and restaurants, staring at the ornate buildings that line it. At the top, in Placa Catalunya, we searched for the Tourist Information that we knew was there somewhere and finally realized it was underground in the centre of the square.


Statues in Placa Catalunya.

We booked a tour of Sagrada Familia and then walked home. Took a break and then back out for dinner and some more exploring Barri Gotic.