"Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914" Exhibition
The Museum of Modern Art
This event has ended.
"Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914" will focus on Pablo Picasso's cardboard and sheet-metal Guitar sculptures, and the incandescent period of material and structural innovation these sculptures bracket in the artist's long career. Bringing together some 70 closely connected collages, constructions, drawings, mixed-media paintings, and photographs assembled from over 30 public and private collections worldwide, the exhibition situates Picasso's modest yet revolutionary Guitars within his broader studio practice between 1912 and 1914.
The exhibition takes as its point of departure Picasso's first "Guitar" construction, a sculpture made between October and December 1912. Cobbled together from cardboard, paper, string, and wire—materials he cut, folded, threaded, and glued—Picasso's silent instrument resembled no sculpture that had ever been seen before. Its creation coincided with Picasso's embrace of a wide range of what were then unconventional materials, including cardboard, newspaper, wallpaper, sheet music, and sand. In 1914 the artist reiterated his fragile, papery Guitar construction in more fixed and durable sheet-metal form. In the early 1970s Picasso donated both works to The Museum of Modern Art.
[Image: Pablo Picasso "Still life with Guitar (Variant State)" (November 15, 1913) paperboard, paper, string, and painted wire installed with cut cardboard box 30 x 20.5 x 7.75 in.]
Media
Schedule
from February 13, 2011 to June 06, 2011