Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds
Audio Exhibition
Sculpture & Landscape
Hello, I am Haley Perkins, the museum’s assistant director of interpretive programming. I will be reading an introduction to the “Sculpture and Landscape” section of Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds.
In the late 1920s, Picasso became increasingly interested in sculpture. He began conceptualizing “Beach Monuments”—outdoor sculptures which recalibrated traditional notions of scale and perspective between the human figure and the surroundings. By 1929, according to his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Picasso had devised plans to fabricate and install a series of monumental female heads along the shores of the Mediterranean. Over the next several decades, Picasso made maquettes that explored various materials and profiles, ranging from abstraction to more representational portraits.
Initially, the demand for such works was low. Picasso admitted: “I am obliged to paint them since no one orders [the monuments] from me.” From the late 1950s onwards, he was commissioned to produce large-scale sculptures for private gardens and public spaces, including his monumental head in Daley Plaza, downtown Chicago (a film of which is on view in this section) and the whimsical Bust of Sylvette, on Bleeker Street in New York’s Greenwich Village.
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, active in France, 1881–1973), Head of a Woman, also called Head of Jacqueline, Cannes, 1957, Painted steel, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, NC.1997.A.05 © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society, (ARS), New York, Courtesy American Federation of Arts
Verbal Description
Hello, I am Haley Perkins, the museum’s assistant director of interpretive programming. I will be reading the label for Head of a Woman, also called Head of Jacqueline, in Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds.
Pablo Picasso, a Spanish artist who lived from 1881 to 1973, made the painted steel sculpture Head of a Woman, also called Head of Jacqueline, in Cannes, France, in 1957. It is part of the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, where its reference number is NC.1997.A.05.
Head of a Woman, also called Head of Jacqueline is about 30 and a half by 13 and three-quarters inches by ten and one-eighths inches or 77 by 35 by 26 centimeters. Rising from a thin rectangular grey base is a tall circular column, forming the neck, painted in shades of white and grey. Black lines encircle the column at about its midpoint and at its top. To make the head, the artist combines three flat pieces of steel standing on end. The first piece creates a profile of a face with a long triangular nose and curved chin painted white with black and blue outlining the features. Perpendicular to this shape is a square piece making the side of the face, including an ear, and the top of the head. The final steel plate is a curved shape painted dark blue with white lines to represent wavy hair in what could be a low ponytail.
Label Text
Hello, I am Haley Perkins, the museum’s assistant director of interpretive programming. I will be reading a description of Head of a Woman, also called Head of Jacqueline, in Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds.
Pablo Picasso, a Spanish artist who lived from 1881 to 1973, made the painted steel sculpture Head of a Woman, also called Head of Jacqueline, in Cannes in 1957. It is part of the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, where its reference number is NC.1997.A.05.
Here Picasso portrays Jacqueline Roque, whom he would marry in 1961, in a model for the first in a series of large-scale engraved sculptures made of cast gravel and concrete. The innovative technique was refined over 17 years in collaboration with Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar. The final, full-scale version of Head of a Woman is also in the collection of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.