Major Picasso exhibition in NYC's Metropolitan museum

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Major Picasso exhibition in NYC's Metropolitan museum

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28 April,2010 06:27 am

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is exhibiting its complete holdings of the Spanish artist Picassos paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics, plus 200 works on paper. The expansive Picasso exhibit, will be a first for the museum. It will include The Actor, which underwent conservation after being accidentally damaged at the Met in January. All the compositions in the exhibition show traces of revision and correction, he said. Some have earlier works by Picasso underneath while others are painted over the works of other artists.In the case of The Actor, which depicts an acrobat posed dramatically against an abstract background, the museum discovered that Picasso had painted the image on the back of a previously painted canvas after covering the earlier work with heavy paint. The painting on the reverse side appears to be a landscape and could have been painted by him or another artist.The Met exhibition, comprising 34 paintings, 58 drawings and 12 sculptures and ceramics, represents every period of Picasso's long career from his self-portrait Yo, made when he was 19, to Standing Nude and Seated Musketeer, when he was 87. Highlights also include the famous 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein, which was a bequest from the American writer in 1946 and the Met's first Picasso acquisition.Hundreds of Picasso's works on paper, which have rarely, if ever, been shown at the museum, will be part of the exhibit. And a video of nine Picasso paintings will demonstrate how the artist revised his compositions, styles and themes in reworking specific paintings.