MoMA EXHIBITION EXPLORES PICASSO'S ICONIC GUITAR SCULPTURES AND HIS EXPERIMENTAL PRACTICE FROM
1912 TO 1914

Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914
February 13-June 6, 2011
Special Exhibitions Gallery, Third Floor

NEW YORK, November 18, 2010—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. The exhibition will be on view in The Museum of Modern Art's Special Exhibitions gallery from February 13 through June 6, 2011. 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 is organized by Anne Umland, Curator, with Blair Hartzell, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art.

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.

Click here for the complete press release.