Col·legi d'Arquitectes Mural — Picasso's Forgotten Frieze

The Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya in Barcelona features a 57-meter-long concrete mural designed by Pablo Picasso in 1960 while he was living in exile in France. Architect Xavier Busquets commissioned the work, which depicts Catalan folk traditions sandblasted into the concrete by Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar. Picasso never returned to Spain under Franco's rule to see the completed artwork before his death in 1973.

Barcelona · from the walk “Stones & Secrets: Hidden Courtyards of the Barri Gòtic” · audio ~3 min · Generated

Plaça Nova 5, Barcelona

How was Pablo Picasso's concrete mural on the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya made?

Look at this building in front of you... the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya. Clean lines, modern concrete, an eight-story tower rising from a low trapezoidal base. Now look closer at the façade. Those bold, childlike figures scratched into the concrete... they were designed by Pablo Picasso himself.......... Architect Xavier Busquets, who won the competition for building this new headquarters, commissioned Picasso to produce drawings for not just one, but Three separate friezes across three façades, plus two more mural compositions for the interior.......... But here's what makes this story extraordinary. Picasso had vowed never to set foot in Spain while Franco was still in power. He was living in exile in the south of France. So how do you decorate a building in Barcelona when the artist refuses to cross the border?......... Before Picasso made a single drawing, Busquets sent him photographs of the building and its surroundings... and even a sixteen millimeter film showing traditional Catalan festivities — giants, Christmas fairs, and human towers — right here in Plaça Nova. Picasso watched that little film in his studio at La Californie in the south of France... and his homesickness poured onto the page.......... But he kept them waiting. Busquets visited him every month and spoke to him on the phone weekly. Then one day, while saying goodbye to Picasso and his wife Jacqueline, Busquets dared to say they couldn't delay any more. Picasso simply replied... "Pray to Our Father that I do it." Just a few days later, on the eighteenth of October, nineteen sixty, at Eleven o'clock at night, he telephoned to say the drawings were ready.......... Now look around you. Each side tells a different story. The "children's frieze" faces Carrer dels Arcs. The "giants' frieze" faces Plaça Nova where you're standing. And the "frieze of the Catalan flag" wraps around the Carrer Capellans side. The giants' frieze celebrates traditional Catalan festivals — palms great and small, folk dances. The flag frieze recalls the clavÉ Choirs and groups from the hermitage of Sant Medir.......... And here's the technique that makes this truly unique. A huge Norwegian artist named Carl Nesjar took the drawings, perforated them with a punch, pressed them against wet concrete, then dusted graphite through the tiny holes. Once the paper was removed, he sandblasted the lines into the surface — carefully following arrows he'd marked to reproduce the different intensities of Picasso's brushstrokes. The result? A fifty-seven meter long mural.......... At the time of its installation, the work was controversial. Many Barcelonans felt it clashed with the Gothic and Roman surroundings, while others celebrated it as proof that the city could embrace both history and modernity.......... And Picasso? He never returned to see it. He passed away in nineteen seventy-three... and Franco lived until nineteen seventy-five... making it impossible for the artist to ever come back to the city he loved. What you see scratched into this concrete is a love letter to Barcelona... written from exile, delivered by a Norwegian giant with a sandblaster, and never seen by its creator.

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