Unusual art - Genius Loci – Farah Atassi.

I love visiting art exhibitions and always hope not to miss a single one. I have a notebook where I write down the museums and exhibitions, plus the dates, but I know that during the Christmas holidays I missed several. There is so much art that I haven't had enough time.

Malaga is known as the city of art, which makes me very happy. I always say that it's the city with the most museums per capita in the world. I couldn't be in a better place to see art.

Before the Christmas season, in the first half of December, I decided to go to the Picasso Museum. I hadn't been there in a long time, more than two years. There are two reasons for this: one is that the amount of time they are open for free is very limited, and the second reason is that before, in the afternoon on Sundays at the time they set, it was very difficult for me to attend, but now I can.

In this case, I had checked their website and there were three huge exhibitions at the museum, one of which ended on December 14. I had to hurry. In the past, I missed spectacular exhibitions, especially of Picasso's sculptures.

I have many folders organized with exhibitions and art from that museum, and today I decided to bring one that surprised me as soon as I entered the room. It is called “Genius Loci” by the artist Farah Atassi. If you look at the room, you will see that it is huge, at least the first one, because there were actually two rooms dedicated to this art exhibition. What I couldn't understand was what those wooden divisions in the middle meant; perhaps they were there to divide the space into sections.

The truth is that there were several security guards and quite a few people attending. The line to enter the museum is immense, approximately a block and a half long.

More than twenty paintings created between 2015 and 2025 are displayed in a wonderful way. They are enormous paintings in terms of their dimensions, as you can see in the photos of the room. They depict figures, objects, and spaces as if they were stage sets. All these works have been previously studied by the artist, referring to avant-garde art, its history, and above all, they are based on the work of Picasso, who is her inspiration for this great exhibition.

But of course, it is clear that the artist has her own particular style; there is no connection with reality in her works, but rather a great deal of artificiality. Above all, one can appreciate the very varied color palette, the superimposition of figures, objects, and lines. There is a lot of ornamentation in her paintings, as well as abstraction, figuration, and an ornamental approach.

The art exhibition was divided into four sections, dealing with the following themes: the workshop, the mechanical cabaret, the shore, and through the window. As I stated in the title of this post, I found this exhibition to be unusual and worth examining in detail for those who enjoy cubism and the style I described above.

The workshop referred to the interior of a workshop itself, as a reflective space in terms of painting and where it is carried out. Here, the character is just another component within the still life.

Pink Painting, 2025, oil on canvas.

Seated Woman and Daisies, 2024, oil on canvas.

Seated Woman with Yellow Hair 2, 2023, oil on canvas.

Still Life with Eggplants, 2022, oil on canvas.

Woman with Green Headscarf, 2022, oil on canvas.

Sleeping Acrobat, 2023, oil on canvas.

Sleeping Acrobat 2, 2023, oil on canvas.

Reclining Woman with Oranges, 2023, oil on canvas.

In the case of Cabaret mecánico, it refers to paintings depicting female bodies in motion, dancing in sync. It evokes the ballet and choreography of the 1930s. The artist emphasizes the dancers' legs rather than the rest of their bodies or their faces.

Mechanical Cabaret 5, 2024, oil on canvas.

Still Life with White Tights 2023, oil on canvas.

Mechanical Cabaret 2, 2023, oil on canvas.

The section entitled Through the Window features paintings in which the interiors have large windows through which cloudy skies and starry nights can be seen, with female characters seated and surrounded by still life. A characteristic element in these works is the presence of clocks, alluding to the inexorable passage of time. A mixture of interior and exterior, reality and fantasy, with the introduction of the dreamlike.

The Green Door, 2024, oil on canvas.

Summer Night, 2024, oil on canvas.

Woman Reading by the Window, 2024, oil on canvas.

The Rest, 2024, oil on canvas.

Studio at Night, 2025, oil on canvas.

Woman with Head in the Clouds, 2024, oil on canvas.

In the section called La Orilla (The Shore), the artist depicts outdoor scenes with women on the beach, which bears a strong resemblance to Picasso's work. But unlike Picasso, what matters in these paintings is the background, the environment in which these women find themselves, where the sun, sky, sea, and sand take precedence, and within this, the clouds take on relevance as an ornamental element.

The Bather, 2018, oil on canvas.

Lone Bather and Clouds 2, 2024, oil on canvas.

Seaside with Citrus, 2025, oil on canvas.

It has truly been an art exhibition in which I have learned a different, unusual style where Picasso is very present, but with the artist's own particularities added.

Thank you very much for joining me today. I wish you a very good Sunday. See you soon.
Amonet.

All photographs are my own.