CultureNOW - Figure découpée: Pablo Picasso and MIT Public Art Collection

Figure découpée, 1958
Artworks: Sculpture

Artist
Pablo Picasso

Collection
MIT Public Art Collection

Materials

Cast concrete with aggregate interior, engraved by sandblasting (

Dates

Created, 1958

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Description

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Pablo Picasso, best known for his paintings and drawings, also applied his restless energies to sculpture. His earliest known sculpture, modeled in clay to be cast in bronze, was made in 1901; he subsequently produced over six hundred throughout his life. Picasso worked generally in two sculptural modes, each grounded in their respective materials and techniques. He modeled sculpture in the round in clay or plaster for casting in bronze; he also constructed frontal, open-form works from cut or found pieces of sheet metal, metal rods, wood, or cardboard. During the 1950s and 1960s, he developed in the latter mode a series of sculptures that were cut from a single sheet of wood or metal and painted. The painted wood and metal cut-outs are closer to painting and drawing than are most of his sculptures and give new importance to painted surfaces in defining and articulating the represented forms. Picasso's interest in combining painting and sculpture attracted him to ceramics, a medium in which he worked prodigiously during the 1950s and 1960s. MIT's Figure découpée (Cut-Out Figure) is one of the cut-out sculptures conceived during the 1950s. It was originally executed in 1958 in oil on wood and represents a bird with head and beak to the right, tail to the left, feet below, and spread wings above. Figure découpée grew out of a series of pen and ink notebook drawings done on May 11, 1958, of birds in flight and owls, none of which, however, correspond in all features to the sculpture. In 1956 Picasso met the Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar who introduced him to a process of concrete casting called betongravure (concrete engraving). Betongravure was developed in Oslo by the architect Erling Viksjø and the engineer Sverre Jystad. Nesjar adapted the process for the enlargement to monumental scale of Picasso's planar sculpture. A wooden form that reproduces the outline shape of the original sculpture is built and filled first with an aggregate of dark gravel or crushed stones

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Location

50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States

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