collages, papiers collés (pictures incorporating glued

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collages, papiers collés (pictures incorporating glueddown pieces of paper) and cardboard and sheet-metal
constructions (fig. 1). Using a reductive but flexible “sign
language” invented in partnership with Braque, he
moved effortlessly between work in two and three
dimensions, bridging the conventional gap between
painting and sculpture by exploring different forms of
relief (from very low to very high), rather than working in
the round.
Fig. 1
Pablo Picasso
Head / Tête, Céret, Spring 1913
Pasted paper, charcoal and pencil on cardboard, 43.5 x 33 cm
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Purchased with help
from the National Heritage Lottery Fund and The Art Fund, 1995
Woman (cover), the centrepiece of this exhibition, is a
sheet-iron sculpture copied exactly from a paper
maquette cut out by Picasso in January 1961. It belongs
to an extended family of similar works with which he
brought to a climax and closed his profoundly innovative
and influential career as a sculptor. Picasso was not
responsible for making the sheet-iron versions himself.
They were produced by artisans in a small factory in
Vallauris owned by his friend Lionel Prejger, who acted
as go-between. Often, more than one version was made
from the same prototype, with variations introduced by,
for instance, leaving the iron unpainted so that it rusted,
or painting it white all over, or modifying the angle of
the limbs. Sometimes Picasso treated the metal like
canvas and decorated it more elaborately, as with the
two relatively life-like portraits of his wife Jacqueline in
the exhibition (Head of a Woman (Jacqueline)).
In making the maquettes Picasso used a simplified form
of the technique of the silhouette artist. He was drawing
on some seventy years of personal experience, for his
own first paper silhouettes date back to his childhood.
Relishing this playful activity and exploiting his
exceptional dexterity, Picasso continued to cut out
figures, animals, toy theatres, masks and so forth to
entertain his family and friends for the rest of his life
(Mask and Large Head of a Clown). The technique came
into its own as a ground-breaking artistic process during
the Cubist period (1912–14), when Picasso made his first
The construction technique permitted the invention of a
radically new type of lightweight, planar sculpture –
often enlivened by colour – in which empty space has
equal status with solid form. Woman and the other freestanding, screen-like sculptures of the early 1960s are
derived from Picasso’s Cubist constructions and use a
similar, abstracted language. But in comparison the
space evoked is more architectural in character, some
(like Woman and Head of a Woman. Profile) involving
angled façades pierced by apertures and a shady, semienclosed area at the back designed to contrast with the
dominant, light-receiving front view.
Picasso continued to use Cubist constructive techniques
after the First World War, initially as a spin-off from
designing sets for the Ballets Russes (Guitar and Table
Before a Window), and then during his collaboration in
1928–32 with the Catalan metalworker Julio González.
The fruitful reciprocity of their relationship is reflected in
three works by González himself (fig. 2), which, while
Fig. 2
Julio González
Sharp Head [Sharp Mask] / Tête aiguë [Masque aigu]
1930 (cast by Valsuani, 1960)
Bronze, 35 x 16.5 x 11 cm
Gift of Roberta González, 1964. Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle
Fig. 3
Pablo Picasso
Sylvette, Vallauris, 1954
Cut and folded sheet-metal, painted on both sides
69.9 x 47 x 0.076 cm
Private collection. Courtesy Fondation H. Looser, Zurich
looking back to Picasso’s Cubism, herald his late cut and
folded sculptures. During the 1940s and early 1950s,
Picasso occasionally used scrap metal in his assemblage
sculptures (sculptures composed of miscellaneous
materials), incorporating a ring and nails in Glass, for
example. But he made no further planar iron sculptures
until his encounter with Tobias Jellinek and Sylvette
David in 1954. Sylvette was the subject not only of
numerous paintings and drawings but also of cardboard
maquettes which Jellinek copied in sheet-metal, leaving
Picasso to complete the sculpture by painting it in black
and white (fig. 3). This collaboration provided the model
for Picasso’s longer association with Prejger and his
workforce in the early 1960s.
Françoise Gilot (Head of a Woman), who lived with
Picasso between 1946 and 1953, has described how they
watched spellbound while Matisse created his brilliantly
coloured papiers découpés (compositions made with cutout paper). The two artists were united in their admiration
of the spontaneity and simplification of child art and after
Matisse’s death a bereaved Picasso paid homage to his
old friend and rival by adapting themes and methods
particularly associated with him. Matisse’s late cut-outs
(fig. 4), where space and form have absolute equality and
abstraction and figuration are held in balance, left their
mark on Picasso’s late sculptures, especially those, like
Woman, where the apertures are organic in shape and
form a bold decorative composition.
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OPENING HOURS
Tuesday to Thursday, 10 am to 8 pm
Fridays to Saturdays, 10 am to 9 pm
Sundays and public holidays, 10 am to 8 pm
24 and 31 December, 10 am to 3 pm
Closed on Mondays, 25 December and 1 January
ADMISSION FEES
Permanent collection: 6.00 euros
Temporary exhibition: 4.50 euros
Combined ticket: 8.00 euros
Ticket sales cease 30 minutes before closing time
101.2 x 76.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alisa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1973
Last Sunday of every month
Picasso’s sculpture was never made in isolation from his
work in other media. Sometimes his paintings project so
strong an illusion of three-dimensionality that they may
fairly be described as virtual sculptures (Still Life with
Guitar). Sometimes they represent his fantasies for
gravity-defying monuments on an enormous scale
(Monument: Head of a Woman) – fantasies partially
realized towards the end of his life when the Norwegian
sculptor Carl Nesjar made giant enlargements in
concrete of sheet-iron sculptures dating from the
“Sylvette period” onwards. Sometimes – notably in the
early 1960s – the symbiotic relationship between
Picasso’s painting and sculpture was such that drawing a
distinction between the two seems pointless (fig. 5).
Picasso made his own position clear in a radio interview
broadcast just after his eightieth birthday (25 October
1961). Asked what he was making at that moment, he
described his sheet-iron sculptures. Asked whether he
was also painting, he replied: “Of course, and in any
case it’s the same thing, exactly the same thing.”
Gallery 12. Working with Picasso. Photographs by Carl Nesjar
comprises a series of images taken by the Norwegian sculptor
of his monumental pieces based on works by Pablo Picasso.
This selection is intended to complement the exhibition
Picasso’s Late Sculpture: Woman. The Collection in Context.
Cover: Pablo Picasso. Woman / Femme, Cannes, 1961
Cut, folded and painted sheet metal (base not painted), 31 x 19.6 x 11.7 cm
Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Christine Ruiz-Picasso
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Lecture Series, Picasso’s Late Sculpture, every Thursday
from 14 May until 11 June at 8.00 pm. MPM Auditorium
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© Of the text: Elizabeth Cowling | © VEGAP, 2009, Succession Picasso, Paris
© Succession H. Matisse / VEGAP / 2009 | © Julio González, VEGAP, Málaga 2009
Cover: © Museo Picasso Málaga. Fotografía: Luis Asín | Fig. 1: © Scottish National Gallery
of Modern Art | Fig. 2: © Photo CNAC / MNAM, Dist. RMN / Philippe Migeat
Fig. 3: © Foundation H. Looser | Fig. 4: © Alisa Mellon Bruce Fund, Image courtesy
of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington
11/05/09 - 30/08/09
Gouache on cut and pasted paper mounted on canvas
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The Collection in Context
Fig. 4
Henri Matisse
Venus, 1952
Picasso’s Late Sculpture: Woman
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