Malaga Picasso Museum follows the trail of the painter through contemporary art

The piece that opens the exhibition is a copy, and a good one at that: Cy Twombly's 1988 version of Picasso's Woman with a Crown of Flowers. The Echo of Picasso starts as it means to go on, with the challenge of spotting Picasso in the work of his contemporaries and, especially, among the generations that followed.

Malaga's Picasso Museum (MPM) commemorates the 50th anniversary of the artist's death with this invitation to follow the trail he left behind in contemporary art. It would be an understatement to define him as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and this goes beyond that. Picasso was constantly "in the minds" of artists of his time, be it in the form of inspiration or a desire to do better.

"And today's artists are obsessed with him; I'm not making it up," said Eric Troncy, curator of the show organised in collaboration with the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso.

The Echo of Picasso brings together 85 pieces by 54 artists, from Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Antonio Saura and Martin Kippenberger to more current names such as Claire Tabouret, Rashid Johnson, Farah Atassi and Cristina BanBan.

"This isn't a Picasso exhibition; it is an exhibition of contemporary art," said Troncy. Throughout the exhibition, however, 18 paintings and sculptures by the Malaga artist himself converse with those who followed him - proof of his influence.

In some cases the link is more subtle, more "poetic and even wild", but the conclusion is the same: "Picasso is still here, alive among us, in the DNA of the 20th century," said Almine Ruiz-Picasso, the wife of the painter's grandson.

Among the wonderful encounters engineered by The Echo of Picasso is an installation by Louise Bourgeois (Shuttle Woman) and a Picasso dated 20 years previously (Couple at the Seaside) with the same elongated oval shape created by the French sculptor. Another is the disturbing face drawn Basquiat and Picasso's Head of a Man (Study for a Unesco mural).

Elsewhere in the room, Personage by Karel Appel is a reproduction in its way of the composition Picasso did decades previously, Seated Woman With Cat. And alongside the distorted face of Michel Leiris, painted by Francis Bacon, is Picasso's Death's Head. "Let's say perhaps that Picasso helped me to see," the British artist once said. "Picasso is the man to beat," said Willem de Kooning, who is featured in this exhibition with a work from his Women series. All of the deceased artists exhibited here once admitted the influence of Picasso, explained Almine Ruiz-Picasso.

Picasso's reverberation through creation continues today. An example is his still life of a bronze bunch of flowers which is exhibited alongside the recent Flor de Taulera by Miquel Barceló, two works that form part of the impressive sculpture collection in the second part of the exhibition.

There are more examples. For the first time in 15 years, Picasso's Massacre in Korea is back in Spain, an impressive large-scale oil on which the artist shows defenceless women and children facing a firing squad. On the opposite wall the scene is reinterpreted by young American artist Jameson Green on a canvas dated 2023. Like this, as many as 17 pieces have been created especially for The Echo of Picasso and are being shown for the first time, among them two cubist portraits of women by Brian Calvin.

Picasso is inside all of the works in this exhibition; no one can, nor wants, to hide it. He is in the portrait of Dora Maar by Antonio Saura, in the immense minotaur by Thomas Houseago or one of the paintings from the series Martin Kippenberger devoted to Jacqueline.

The Echo of Picasso, which runs until 31 March, was officially opened on Monday as 64% of the museum staff - according to the union committee - were on strike. This was the third day of action after an impasse in the negotiation of the workers' agreement. For more than 40 minutes, arriving guests were met by whistle-blowing, slogan-chanting protesters, among them a few local artists who had turned out to support the museum's staff.