BRUSSELS.- Considered as one of the most important painters of the 20th century, the Spanish artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) also created sculptures throughout his life that were as innovative as they were influential. After the MoMA in New York and the Musée national Picasso-Paris, BOZAR is bringing together 80 of Picasso’s sculptures for the very first retrospective of the artist’s sculptures here in Belgium. The exhibition is laid out in a chronological and thematic circuit elaborated in collaboration with the Musée national Picasso-Paris. Picasso’s sculptures enter into dialogue with around twenty of his canvases, around fifteen ceramics, and objets d’art from non-European cultures which belonged to his personal collection. Picasso will always be remembered as the prolific and fabulous painter. However, Picasso. Sculptures reveals Picasso the sculptor, the man behind some of the most radical forms of modern sculpture.

With more than 80 sculptures, around twenty canvases, just as many ceramics and African and Oceanic art objects from the artist’s private collection, Picasso. Sculptures offers the public an exceptional journey through Picasso’s intimate universe and is an opportunity to marvel at his aesthetic approach from a completely different perspective.

The majority of the works on show in Picasso. Sculptures are from the collection of the Musée national Picasso-Paris, and completed with the exception of about fifteen loans from the Fundaçión Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte. Woman’s Head (Fernande), Glass of Absinthe, Violin, Woman in the Garden, Man with Sheep, Bull’s Head, Woman with Outstretched Arms, Pierrot and Still life with Chair Caning are some of the masterpieces that feature in the exhibition.

PICASSO. SCULPTURES
“Large, ambitious and unavoidably, dizzyingly peripatetic." It is in these laudatory terms that The New York Times described the retrospective devoted to Picasso’s sculptures in New York, that were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with the Musée national Picasso-Paris in autumn 2015. In the same way, the exhibition Picasso. Sculptures on show from March 8th until August 28th 2016 at the Hôtel Salé of the Musée national Picasso-Paris, focused on the multi-faceted dimension of Picasso’s sculptures, by way of series and variations, casts, prints and enlargements carried out from a selection of sculpted originals.

At the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, a selection of key sculptures will be put back in their original context thanks to paintings and objects from the artist’s personal collection (Iberian art, African sculpture and ethnographic collections). The relationship between sculpture and the other artistic disciplines will be examined and recurring themes in Picasso’s work, such as the tension between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space, will be explored.

THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition Picasso. Sculptures is organised chronologically and thematically. The sculptor’s studio will be evoked by way of a deconstruction between the works.

Series and variations, casts, prints and enlargements created from a selection of sculpted originals will illustrate the diversity of Picasso’s sculpture. Exceptional ensembles will shed light on the huge variety of techniques explored by Picasso and will be the real highlights of the exhibition: the bronzes produced by the French art dealer Ambroise Vollard, the sculpted wood in Gósol, Spain, the cubist assemblages, the soldered wire sculptures that were created for the Monument to Apollinaire, the bronzes made from plasters casts in the Boisgeloup studio, the Valsuani and Robecchi editions, the painted bronzes from the 1950s, the public sculptures, and finally the cut up sheet metal. Emblematic figures, like Woman in the Garden (1929), Bull’s Head (1942) and Man with Sheep (1943) will also be on display.

Picasso. Sculptures takes a unique look at the inventiveness and originality with which Picasso combined numerous materials and multiple techniques in his creative process. He would often turn daily objects and materials (nails, handlebars, taps, sieves, forks, plats, pieces of brick, sand, wire etc.) into art, and drew inspiration from African and ethnic masks and fetish objects. By bringing together a variety of techniques and materials and by creating completely new forms, he broadened the definition of sculpture. Picasso’s sculptures form the basis of the most radical forms of modern sculpture of the 20th century and has influenced many generations of artist until today.