Picasso's eros prints tell story about his obsession with women and sex

Pablo Picasso: 28 x 39 cm (1968).

There's a fine line between eroticism and lust.

Pablo Picasso probed this boundary and crossed it many times with great sexual and artistic dexterity and passion.

Picasso's friend and collector, Swiss textile industrialist George Bloch, vicariously engaged in Picasso's obession with Eros.

Beginning in 1920 until Picasso died in 1973, Bloch (1901 - 1984) acquired 2,000 Picasso prints, most of them the artist's first impressions.

As a result, 100 of Picasso's erotic linocuts, etchings, woodcuts, dry points, aquatints, lithographs and copperplate engravings from the Bloch collection continue on show at the Kunstmuseum Bern (Museum of Fine Arts Bern), Switzerland's oldest art museum.

"The Power of Eros" opened 24 Feb. and closes 1 May; Theresa Bhattacharya-Stettler curated the show.

Swiss arts journalist Bernard Lechot (swissinfo.ch) reviewed the exhibition.

He said you could visualize Picasso's  women in these works: Fernande Oliver, Olga Koklova, Marie Therese Walter, Dora Maar, Francoise Gilot and Jacqueline Roque.

"Picasso often treated sexuality irreverently," added Lechot.

"In 1905, he produced his Saltimbanques series of prints, one of which shows an ironic depiction of Salome's dance before Herod. Salome is ugly and scrawny. Herod slouches. A musician holds a child as if it were a violin."

Another major Picasso happening:  24 March in Malaga, the artist's birthplace, at the inaugural opening of the new Baroness Thyssen Museum, which will showcase works by Picasso, Joan Miro and Antoni Tapies.

The event heralds completion of a home for Spanish Baroness Carmen Thyssen's private collection of more than 220 works in the newly renovated Villalon Palace in Malaga's old city centre.

The two-year project cost 11-million Euros and will  house her permanent collection until at least 2025.

Good thing Picasso was prolific.

(He said: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.")

Pablo Picasso: "Les demoiselles d'avignon."

A third big Picasso happening on the horizon, starting 6 Aug. through 4 Nov. at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh.

The city's festival falls during the Picasso show, which combines for the first time Tate Britain and the Scottish gallery co-curating an exhibition of 150 works drawn from private and public collections, including 60 paintings.

Rock on and practice peace and love.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will be at peace." Jimmy Hendrix.

It's that time of the year to start thinking about thawing out and heading to our sunny Andalusian mountains for a walking vacation and/or sculpture or mosaics week-long workshop.

If interested, see: www.spanjeanders.nl and www.competafinearts.com.

Salares, Andalusia from the ruins of Bentomiz. Photo by Stefan van Drake.

ArtTraveler Video: Flamenco dancer interprets a Federico Garcia Lorca poem during the Spanish inaugural of John Barrett's "Lorca: A Dream of Life" - his Competa, Spain exhibition of paintings and illustrations interpreting Lorca's poems, a 15-year project.