Picasso Sculpture

Throughout his career Pablo Picasso worked prolifically in producing three- as well as two-dimensional art. While his drawings, paintings, and prints have attracted more scholarly attention (and higher auction prices) than his sculptures, his developments in the latter have influenced other artists and reflected the spirit of improvisation in 20th-century modernism. Incorporating collage into his paintings, Picasso also introduced commercially produced objects into his sculptures—absinthe spoons, baskets, nuts, bolts. He painted on bronze or sheet-metal sculptures and formed motifs taken from his canvases. Museum of Modern Art curators Temkin and Anne Umland trace the episodic nature of his output through impressive loans from international collections and insightful catalog essays. The main text offers a detailed chronology by curators Luise Mahler and Virginie Perdrisot in eight chapters, incorporating new archival research to build upon the 2000 catalog raisonné by Werner Spies and Christine Piot. An exhibition checklist, photographs of the sculptures by Hungarian artist Brassaï, extensive references, and a list of selected public exhibitions before the first sculpture retrospectives in 1966 round out the volume.