PABLO PICASSO

Picasso took to sculpting in Barcelona, in the year 1902. He went on to become a prolific sculptor as well as a painter. The work presented here is a single plaster cast of Picasso’s left palm from a series of plaster studies dear to the artist, who fondly called them ‘his plastics’. Between 1930 and 1935 in his sculpting studio at the Château de Boisgeloup, then in Paris until 1944, Picasso devoted himself mostly to plaster, experimenting with modelling, assemblage, and imprints. Influenced—as in his paintings—by primitive sculpture, Picasso engaged in a dialogue with matter, physically confronting his hands with clay, and plaster in particular. Picasso, who deemed the bronze casts of his works as too impersonal, often favoured the final form of the raw material, such as plaster. Speaking of his plaster sculptures, Picasso told his friend and exegete Pierre Daix: ‘They were much more beautiful in plaster... I wouldn’t even consider casting them in bronze at first...’

This unique historic work is listed in the Catalogue Raisonné des sculptures de Picasso (N°220 C), as well as in the following catalogues: Une Collection Picasso, Œuvres de 1937 à 1946, Huiles, Gouaches, Dessins, Collages et Découpages from the ‘Marie-Thérèse Walter’ Collection, Galerie Krugier, Geneva, December 1973 (introductory illustration); and Picasso. The Sculpture, Galleria Borghese, Rome, from 24 October 2018 to 3 February 2019 (pp. 186-187). Owned by a famous collector who acquired it from the Picasso Estate, this mythical work has not been exhibited in public for more than twenty years.

In addition to this seminal work in Picasso’s oeuvre, the exhibition will document Picasso’s wide range of styles and techniques used over his lifetime, by featuring important paintings in oil on canvas or as fresco, as well as works on paper in ink and in gouache.