See ‘Picasso and Paper’ in Cleveland

The figure sits naked in one of the most intimate spaces of the home, while a second, blue-faced woman brushes her hair and a third holds a mirror in front of her. The scene radiates feminine energy, and the meticulously assembled collage is one of Pablo Picasso’s works on paper. The piece, “Women at Their Toilette,” is one of hundreds of pieces from the famed painter on display in “Picasso and Paper” at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Running Dec. 8 through March 23, the exhibition is co-organized by the Royal Academy of Arts in London and presented in partnership with the Musée National Picasso-Paris. Composed of nearly 300 works displayed in chronological order, “Picasso and Paper” spans the artist’s career.

He was just really endlessly fascinated by the physical properties of paper and the different things he could do with it,” says Britany Salsbury, curator of prints and drawings for the Cleveland Museum of Art. 

Picasso’s interest in paper is revealed in works ranging from collages of wallpaper to sculptures made using pieces of torn and burnt paper. His 1912 piece “Violin” uses laid paper, wallpaper, newspaper, wove paper and glazed black wove paper on cardboard with pencil and charcoal to illustrate the artist’s interpretation of the instrument. 

Sculpting and paper merge in “Head of a Woman,” which manipulates paper’s structure to portray delicate female features. The exhibition also presents a limited number of Picasso paintings and sculptures that are closely related in theme to the paper works. 

“There have been exhibitions about his drawing, specifically about his prints,” Salsbury says. “But this exhibition is the first to really look more holistically at how he thought about the particular materiality of paper and the role it played in developing the revolutionary ideas he had about art.”  

11150 East Blvd., Cleveland 44106, 216/421-7350, clevelandart.org

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