Picasso the…sculptor?

Enrique Mallen, Professor of Linguistics and Art History, Sam Houston State University, writes about a legal battle involving a Pablo Picasso sculpture. A very rare piece of artwork which recently sold for over $100 million but is it real?

A legal battle has erupted between art dealer Larry Gagosian and the royal family of Qatar, with each side claiming to have purchased a Picasso statue from Picasso’s daughter Maya Widmaier-Picasso.

Admittedly, Picasso’s sculptures make up a small fraction of the estimated 50,000 works the artist produced in his lifetime.

There’s still debate over how many Picasso produced. The famous Picasso biographer Roland Penrose included 284 entries in his extensive exhibition of Picasso sculptures, and Picasso scholar Werner Spies identified 664 items in his catalogue raisonné. Meanwhile, the Online Picasso Project contains 796 sculptures.

But when looking at the output of an artist, it’s not merely a question of quantity; it’s also a question of quality. It’s telling that when Dominique Bozo, the curator of Paris’s Musée Picasso, selected a list of the works to be donated to the museum, he chose around 150 sculptures (to accompany 200 paintings).

Given the paucity of Picasso sculptures, it’s not surprising that they’re rarely sold (and thus lose out on the media buzz generated by each Picasso auction). Of the 116 unique artworks by Picasso auctioned at Christie’s in 2014, only nine were sculptures; of the 201 sold at at Sotheby’s, only 21 were sculptures.

Yet in most cases, the sculptures sold well above their estimated values.

read more at Disinfo.com

a reply to: DisinfoCom

Thank you for posting this, I learned something new today

When I had the privilege to travel to Paris and go to the louvre, observing the sculptures they have there was nothing short of breathtaking (if you enjoy art and history that is)

Also I love how sculptures have lasted the test of time, whereas the person who made them did not. For me It shows the importance of leaving something behind of significance before I go.

Picasso also dabbled with ceramics, book illustrations, theatre design, politics and a lot more. Most painters do sculptures and vice versa.

I hate Picasso because I can't ignore him.