Picasso and Paper

Picasso and Paper
Cleveland Museum of Art – Until Mar 03, 2025 Cleveland (US)

Pablo Picasso’s extended engagement with paper is the subject of the groundbreaking exhibition Picasso and Paper, organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris.

300 works.

Showcasing nearly 300 works spanning the artist’s career, the exhibition highlights Picasso’s relentless exploration of paper. His appreciation of and experimentation with the material is revealed in the works ranging from collages of cut-and-pasted papers to sculptures from pieces of torn and burnt paper, manipulated photographs, drawings in virtually all available media, and prints in an array of techniques . The exhibition’s highlights include Femmes à leur toilette (1937–38), an extraordinarily large collage (9 13/16 x 14 1/2 feet) of cut-and-pasted papers, which will be exhibited for the first time in the United States ; outstanding Cubist collaged papers; artist’s sketchbooks, including studies for his best known paintings, including Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; constructed paper guitars from the Cubist and Surrealist periods; and an array of works related to major paintings and sculptural projects.

Blue Period.

The exhibition presents these works on paper chronologically alongside a limited number of closely related paintings and sculptures. For example, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s La Vie (1903), from Picasso’s Blue Period, will be featured with preparatory drawings and other works on paper exploring corresponding themes. In the Cubist section, Picasso’s bronze Head of a Woman (Fernande) (1909) (Musée Picasso, Paris) will be surrounded by a large group of associated drawings. Seen together, these groupings highlight the connections that Picasso saw between media and the integral role that paper played throughout his artistic practice.

Cleveland Museum of Art→  11150 East Boulevard Cleveland, OH, USA 44106

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