Pablo Picasso

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (the MET) has just inaugurated an exhibition dedicated to Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). It includes 300 works by the Spanish painter that are part of the MET's permanent collection, some of these never before exhibited. The exhibition consists of 34 paintings, 58 drawings, 12 sculptures and ceramics, and some 200 engravings, a range of works that permits showcasing Picasso¿s multidisciplinary career. The exhibition will remain open until August 2010. Noteworthy among the works shown is Picasso¿s 1960 portrait of U.S. writer Gertrude Stein. A young Picasso is also present in the exhibition with the self-portrait entitled Yo (I) created by the artist ¿ when he was 18 years old ¿ along with other caricatures of the characters who frequented Els Quatre Gats tavern, one of the favorite spots for bohemians in Barcelona. An icon from the beginning of Picasso¿s ¿Blue Period¿, Seated Harlequin (1901) is also on display, along with At the Lapin Agile (1905), from his ¿Rose Period,¿ in which the artist is shown dressed as a harlequin and seated at a table in a cabaret of the same name as one he was accustomed to frequenting in Paris. Also part of these retrospective is Standing Nude and Seated Musketeer, a work Picasso painted in 1968 when he was 87 years old, in which he reclaims the figure of the musketeer, often used by Rembrandt, whom the Spanish artist deeply admired. Gary Tinterow, the curator of the exhibition, acknowledges that during the last few months New York has been living a season of all things Picasso, since the MoMA is also showing a retrospective of drawings and engravings by this artist.