VISITING THE PICASSO MUSSEUM. BREAKING DOWN STEREOTYPES

      Picasso is considered one of the biggest artist of the 20th century. We all the women he loved and painted. However, because of the technic he used, it's not always easy to recognized these women as we supposed a women should looks like. This is the reason why we have chosen his work to think about gender stereotypes.

    Guided by the history teacher, a group of students visited the Picasso Museum that counts with a big amount of female portrayals. Students were located in front of a Picasso's sister portrait which was supposed to be "realistic". They inmediately identifyed it as a woman because it had red and dick lips, big  breasts, narrow eyebrows...all the elements that a woman is supposed to have. However, this wasn't a realistic work as Picasso's sister wasn't as old and she didn't really look like  the woman of the picture.

Later on, they watched a portrait of Dora Maar, the artist who was Picasso's girlfriend for several years. On this occassion students didn't recognized her as a woman at the first sight, because she wasn't represented as we have been taught. Nevertheless, when the museum instructor talked to them, when she started to ask question and to guide their experience in front of the portrait, students realized that the picture represented very well how Picasso saw his girlfriend, that the picture represented her inner personality much better than the other "realistic" one. In few words, sometimes a "realistic representation" means only a way of representing according the social rules. Our students learnnt that women can look very different, that there is not only a way to look like a woman, and this can be also said about any other person.