An exhibition portrays Picasso's relationship with the surrealist object Jamais

Up until a few months ago, the piece that the artist from the Canary Islands, Óscar Domínguez, baptized as Jamais, was considered to have disappeared. But in the preparations for the exhibition entitled Picasso. La mirada del fotógrafo, which the Museu Picasso de Barcelona organised in 2019, some snapshots of Nick de Morgoli were discovered from a private collection showing the Andalusian painter with the object in his Parisian studio in the Rue des Grands-Augustins. Thanks to this clue it was possible to know that Dominguez had given the work to Picasso, and it was finally possible recover the Jamais. The Picasso Museum is opening a temporary exhibition on July 15 in which visitors will find the Jamais reinstated by the museum's restorer, Reyes Jiménez, as well as images of Picasso with the object captured by Morgoli's lens, and snapshots of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme of 1938 in Paris, an exhibition prepared by André Breton and Paul Eluard that represented a before and after for the surrealist movement. The Jamais was present at that exhibition, amongst other well-known works such as Salvador Dalí's rain taxi or Marcel Duchamp's roof made of coal sacks.

But, what is the Jamais? It is a silent phonograph painted in white with a plate represented by an abdomen that turns under a hand that acts as a needle, and through the amplifier a woman's legs come out. It is considered one of the mythical objects of surrealism, and after spending years inside a box in a warehouse, you can now see it in all its splendor until March 7th at the Picasso.

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