Combining travel with art is always high on my list. Especially when I have the opportunity to visit an artist’s home country or even the city he was born in.

In Switzerland, I made it a point to explore the Paul Klee Center in Bern. The building itself is very modern and its silver, rolling shape stood out from the surrounding countryside that featured old farm houses on the edge of the Swiss Capital. While I am not extremely fond of Klee’s art (his minimalistic pen strokes do not always speak to me emotionally) the ability to place these drawings or paintings into context inspired my mind. Viewing how his art developed over time helped me to access it better. It created a new understanding of his art.

Picasso has always touched me differently than Klee. His work always was able to evoke some strong type of emotions within me. Besides, I love many of his color combinations, especially in his cubic and blue periods. Thus, when I visited Malaga, I had to make it a point to stroll through the Picasso Museum. I liked the way his paintings and select sculptures were presented in small rooms rather than open halls. Art can feel overwhelming when the exhibition room is too big and no end can be seen to the exhibit. Of course, the size of a gallery room mostly depends on the size of individual art pieces.

The Spanish palace which houses the Picasso museum was pleasant. The rooms surround a center court and differ in sizes reflective of Picasso’s asymmetrical pieces. Security, of course, is extremely high but unobtrusive.  Straw mats cover the windows of the museum, preventing the view across narrow streets into opposite apartments. The building itself is located within Malaga’s historical inner city. Little cafes, bars and souvenir shops line the cobble-stoned streets. Around the corner a tiny fruit store opens into an old, yellow building. The colorful fruit are carefully stacked on blue plastic crates along the mustard-colored façade. Picasso’s actually birth house is not far from here. It is actually impossible for me to fathom that Picasso has ever been a helpless baby dependent on anybody else but him.

Being in environments where artists breathed and lived helps build an understanding of these people beyond their art. No better place than Lanzarote proves this last statement. Cesar Manrique grew up on Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands. He influenced the architecture of his home country in a profound and irrevocable way. After finding fame in New York, he decided to return to Lanzarote where he was the architect of several monuments. He also is responsible for passing planning laws that keep the island’s one-story homes consistently white with green or blue window frames and doors. The houses stand out like small pearls from the black landscape, which was formed through the eruption of volcanoes 300 years ago.  Dining in a big underground hall which he designed and transformed into a restaurant that is able to seat 600 people makes visitors participate in his art. The only daylight seems to spread into this cavern penetrates large, linen sails mounted over two openings in the ceiling – which turns out to be a well-manufactured illusion.

Artists help lure visitors to a destination. The reason may be that enjoying their work in the places where they spent parts of their lives often enhances a traveler’s understanding of an artist’s work. This particular insight and learning could not picked up by simply reading a book about these artists, seeing pictures of their pieces or walking through a museum hall that exhibits one of two of their masterworks. A place, a location, a city and a country provide essential context to our understanding of history. This also applies to art history.