This landmark exhibition is the first to focus exclusively on works by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973) in the Museum’s collection. It features 300 works, including the Museum’s complete holdings of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics by Picasso—never before seen in their entirety—as well as a selection of the artist’s prints. The Museum’s collection reflects the full breadth of the artist’s multi–sided genius as it asserted itself over the course of his long and influential career. Notable for its remarkable constellation of early figure paintings, which include the commanding At the Lapin Agile (1905) and the iconic portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906), the Museum’s collection also stands apart for its exceptional cache of drawings, which remain relatively little known, despite their importance and number. The key subjects that variously sustained Picasso’s interest—the pensive harlequins of his Blue and Rose periods, the faceted figures and tabletop still lifes of his cubist years, the monumental heads and classicizing bathers of the 1920s, the raging bulls and dreaming nudes of the 1930s, and the rakish cavaliers and musketeers of his final years—are amply represented by works ranging in date from a dashing self-portrait of 1900 (Self–Portrait "Yo") to the fanciful Standing Nude and Seated Musketeer painted nearly seventy years later.
The exhibition and the catalogue are made possible by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.