MoMA: 1st US exhibition of Picasso sculptures in 50 years
Baku, September 10, AZERTAC
New York's Museum of Modern Art is devoting an entire floor to the sculptures of Pablo Picasso in the first major U.S. museum survey of his three-dimensional work in nearly 50 years, according to Dothaneagle.
From his earliest piece, a tiny terra cotta of a seated woman created in 1902, to a head of a woman made in 1964, "Picasso Sculpture" features more than 140 works on loan from private and public collections that showcase the scope, range and variety of his sculptures. They include his bronze "She-Goat" from 1950 and sheet metal and wire "Guitar" from 1914 from MoMA's own collection.
MoMA will be the only U.S. venue to host the exhibition, which opens Sept. 14 and runs through Feb. 7.
The Spanish artist was trained in painting, not sculpting. This allowed him to be "extremely free in thinking about what is a sculpture," said Ann Temkin, co-curator of the show. "The degree of invention in terms of material and techniques that he used introduced brand-new ideas that had not been involved in the making of sculpture" before.
His "revolutionary" approach had an enormous impact on other artists, she said.
Picasso, who died in 1973, viewed his sculptures as companions, keeping them in his possession during his lifetime. This partly explains why his 3-D works are less known than his paintings.
"He kept them in the rooms of his home and all the spaces of his studio," Temkin said. "They were his stuff while in his mind the paintings were something he made to be shown and sold."
Picasso created about 700 sculptures — compared with some 4,300 paintings. He made them in phases, sometimes with breaks of several years. Each time he resumed, he would begin with an entirely new set of materials and techniques.
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