Posted Sep 29, 2022, 10:00 AMUpdated on Sep 29, 2022 at 4:02 p.m.
16,000: this is the number of painted works officially produced by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and listed in his catalog raisonné. In 2000, modern art historian Werner Spies organized the first major exhibition in France of the artist’s sculptures at the Center Pompidou. Its catalog, which is a reference, contains 664 works. Clearly, Pablo produced almost 24 times more paintings than sculptures. That is to say if in the ocean of his creation his sculpture looks like a poor relation. Because even if he attached real importance to his last, he will show them only late in his career.
Pierre Daix specifies in the New Picasso dictionary (1) that it was only in 1966, on the occasion of an exhibition organized at the Petit Palais in Paris – Picasso was then 85 years old – that he left his workshops the almost all of his sculpted work, two-thirds unknown. And as surprising as it may seem today, the exhibition then had no success. She is even ignored by the press.
