HOMAGE TO PICASSO:
HORTA REVISITED
An artist's journey to HORTA de San Juan, Spain
ANTON KRAJNC celebrated PICASSO'S CUBIST SUMMER in HORTA DE SAN JUAN,
in preparation of the 90th ANNIVERSARY of this event, in 1999.
'HORTA, Houses on the Hill', oil/canvas by Anton Krajnc, 1989
Project Horta
In July of 1989, exactly eighty years after Picasso spent
the most crucial and most productive summer of his entire career
in Horta de San Juan in the Spanish province Tarragona,
the Austrian artist Anton Krajnc embarked upon a journey to that town,
searching for the roots of Analytic Cubism, said to have begun there.
He drove inland from the Costa Dorada, up to the small place
of 1400 inhabitants: Horta de 'Sant Joan' in Catalán, the local language.
(Picasso, not a man of many Saints, preferred to call it Horta de Ebro, for its nearby river...)
Sitting on a hill, its houses the colour of the surrounding landscape -
rose and ochre - piled up like so many building blocks,
connected and separated by narrow winding streets,
the village had been bypassed by time and tourists.
Much had remained unchanged, but there was one hotel then, in '89,
just at the outskirts: the Miralles.
In the medieval center, on the Plaza de la Iglesia, a rather small plaque identifies the house
where Picasso stayed with Fernande Olivier. A street has been named after the famous artist.
A museum, now completed, was just under construction, whose goal it is to eventually exhibit as many reproductions as possible of the ninety-two works completed in Horta during Picasso's two stays there, in 1909
and eleven years earlier, when he came to recuperate from scarlet fever.
"All I know I have learned in Horta" -
a famous quote by Pablo Picasso, written in Catalan.
This photo is exhibited in the Centre Picasso in Horta.
Krajnc' interest in Cubism dates back to his days as a student
at the Viennese Akademie der Bildenden Künste and at Istituto Statale d'Arte in Urbino, Italy.
He read anything and everything relating to his favorite topic.
And much has been written about it and the "Cubist approach" that lets you circle a subject,
look inside and behind it, without moving from your spot in front of the canvas.
Cubism?
Some answers, by Krajnc
Since World War I interrupted the very intense collaboration and playful competition between Spaniard Pablo Picasso and Frenchman Georges Braque, in 1914, other artists have picked up on the Cubist concept and developed their own interpretations.
David Hockney may not call it Cubism, but his cameraworks - his polaroid collages that add the element of time, the passage of time, to the medium of photography, by juxtaposing many split-second impressions - definitely are rooted in it. The resulting image is much more than the total of its parts.
The Challenge
Following in Picasso's footsteps
The journey continues... Horta is painted, anew.
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Last modified: December 28, 2002
Image scanning and layout by Anton
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