Rosalía has apologised for her comments about Spanish painter Pablo Picasso and separating the art from the artist, after learning about accusations of abuse.
The singer spoke to writer Mariana Enriquez for Spotify Presenta recently, and shared her admiration for the iconic artist, adding that she believes in separating the personal life of a creative from the art that they made.
“I really like Picasso and it has never bothered me to separate the artist from the work,” she said. “Maybe I wouldn’t have liked it so much because of the things they have explained to me, but who knows, maybe yes. I don’t know and I don’t care, I enjoy his work.”
Now, after some backlash, Rosalía has apologised for her comments, and explained that she was unaware of accusations of abuse and misogyny surrounding the artist.
The accusations raised against Picasso mainly concern his treatment of women, and include allegations of physical assault.
Previously, there have been protests held at the Picasso Museum due to the claims, and accusations relating to his relationship with Dora Maar, who was seeing him in the ‘30s and ‘40s and reportedly suffered a black eye after being hit by Picasso.
The painter’s granddaughter also wrote in a 2001 book about his alleged treatment of women, saying that he “submitted them to his animal sexuality, tamed them, bewitched them, ingested them and crushed them onto his canvas” (via Reuters).
After taking a few days to look into the controversy surrounding the late artist, Rosalía has shared an apology to fans and said she wouldn’t have made her initial comments if she had known the “real cases of abuse” that were made against Picasso.
“I’ve wanted to make this video for days, but I wanted to choose the right words. I’m not comfortable with what happened when I talked about Picasso’s topic. I’m not at peace with what I said about Picasso,” she said (as translated to English).
“Everyone says I shouldn’t make a video, shouldn’t respond, shouldn’t say anything, but I personally am not at peace,” she added. “It’s important not to talk about certain things when you don’t have enough knowledge. I personally thought Picasso was a great man, as people have said before. But I didn’t know there were real cases of abuse.”
ROSALÍA apologises for saying she ‘separates the art from the artist’ in relation to Pablo Picasso.
She explains that she was not aware he had abused women and that her knowledge of him being great was based on what she heard from others. She also clarifies she is a feminist as… pic.twitter.com/CdQU5rtY7e
— Pop Base (@PopBase) March 14, 2026
“I want to apologise if there was a lack of sensitivity on my part during that conversation with Mariana, and for that absolute lack of empathy with those women and their testimonies,” she added.
The video discussing Picasso comes shortly after the singer had to clarify her stance on Bad Bunny, when she discussed singing in different languages and said that she was the “opposite” of Puerto Rican star in how she sees it.
Last month, the singer broke out a captivating performance at the BRITs where she brought out Bjork as a special guest, and performed songs from her hit album ‘LUX’.
That album saw her sing in 13 different languages, and was given a glowing five-star review by NME, who lauded its “astonishing scope and ambition”. It was also named on the best albums of the year list by NME, while ‘Reliquia’ from the album landed at Number Seven on our 50 best songs of 2025 list.
The singer has a huge 2026 world tour on the way, which includes dates in the UK, Europe and North America in the coming months. See all of the dates here and find any remaining tickets here.
