Picassos are there, in Basel

I spent some memorable time in the Swiss city of Basel in my early twenties. The city is charming, artistic, simple and free—being in love at the time with a local hipster certainly has something to do with it's impression on me. Still, my traveling buddies felt its spirit too. It's a great place.




The city's Kunstmuseum was a favored spot to roam on cold or rainy days, and a place I wanted to share with my family. On this latest visit we were fortunate that the museum was hosting a very special Pablo Picasso exhibit Die Picassos Sind Da!




Picasso helped lead the movement of modern art in the early twentieth century. He stirred up controversy and gained acceptance and clout unlike no other living artist before or since. A passionate man of many women, and visualization and creativity at his core, he often alluded in obvious and other times more subtle ways to sex and all the parts that entail 'it'.




Like my love affair with and around the city, Basel fell hard in adoration for Picasso in 1967 in what was known as the Picasso Year. In fact, the people of of the city were so in love that it approved a loan of 6 million Franks and raised another 2.4 million Franks in a strong initiative to acquire two special paintings of the artist.




The current exhibit introduces various works that are privately owned and have never been on public display as well as pieces on loan from the Foundation Beyeler. It includes paintings, sketches, drawings and sculpture from Picasso's early to late years taking visitors through his various artistic phases of Cubism, Neo-classism and Surrealism, which this featured vibrant beret painting is. The idea was to create art 'as beautiful as the chance encounter'.




It is an impressive collection that pulls together the visions, thoughts and talent of Picasso. The Girl in the (irange) Beret is an oil painting chosen to promote the exhibit, and one that turned out to be a favorite of ours. The posters are fantastic, but hold nothing to the real painting hanging on the wall.His sequence of sketches shown in one room convey the immense talent he had for combining a few simple lines together to deliver a clear visual message. In these I found great humor. The Picassos are there in Basel now, and it's well, well worth a short trip, or long. Do not miss this special collection. If I still lived there, I'd go for Happy Hour every day - between 5-6 admission is free.




The Basel Kunstmusem has a Picasso exhibit book for sale that describes the city's love affair with Picasso and offers photos and descriptions of every work included in the exhibit. We didn't pick one up because of weight, but I've already ordered a copy to be mailed home. Look up the 1903 sketch The Kiss. It was one of my favorites.
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Giverny: Monet's Place of Inspiration in Normandy

Claude Monet, the world famous Impressionist painter of the late nineteenth century, was a bold, gifted man. Giverny, France is where Monet made his home in the final years of his life. He lived in a large country home with a gorgeous blue tile kitchen and large yellow-walled dining room fit to hold twenty comfortably.





It is the place where he established his prominent brightly colored gardens of various plant species. It is home to the lily pad pond and green Japanese bridges that gave inspiration to some of his most popular paintings.


The aura of the place is powerful.


At this time this year the air is crisp. The weather has been much cooler overall for longer moving into spring—we're only hitting mid-fifties in mid-April. Monet's gardens would normally be well-moving into hearty bloom by now. For us the flowers are just beginning to bud and expose their petals, reaching out hungrily for the sun's warmth so to draw out full and complete.


With this irregular infancy in the flowers' growth we had the opportunity to imagine the fresh, vivid rainbow that clutched Monet's heart and hand, creating lurid expressions that have brightened the light of the world for millions over the years, and more and more to come, for certain.

The place is enchanting. It's inspiring. I felt as though I could spend months there drawing out the magic of the place to create my very own unique communication of life's treasures, it's flow, adaptation and progression.


Walking along the budding paths of the garden and over the bridges, around the pond dancing with the flow of winter's snow melt reflecting in the sun's rays, nude from the luscious Water Lilies (1906) painted in summer's flourish, Monet's impression is clearly seen. It's there in the water of the earth linked to all that surrounds it, including us.


The hairs on my body stood tall. I could feel it acutely—the magic of Giverny.


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