Picasso Presents

It is a wry paradox of art history that some of the most influential sculptures of modern times were never actually seen by the men they influenced. They were four metal-rod constructions that Picasso made in 1928-29. Known only from photographs, these light, airy images--a form of "drawing in space" --helped shift the attention of postwar sculptors in America and Europe away from the solid block and toward open structure. But Picasso never allowed them to be sold to a dealer, a collector, or a museum; they remained in his own collection in France after they had been rejected by a committee for a memorial to Picasso's friend, Poet Guillaume Apollinaire. ("What did they expect me to make, a muse holding a torch?" Picasso grumbled later.)

Now New York's Museum of Modern Art announces that Picasso has given its sculpture garden a 15-foot-high version of one of these works, Construction in Wire, 1928. Based on a smaller maquette he made ten years ago, the monumental piece is being fabricated in Cor-Ten steel and will go to the museum in early fall. Thus there will be two key Picasso sculptures in the U.S. (the other is the sheet-metal Guitar, 1912), and MOMA has them both, as presents from the artist. Picasso's evident fondness for the museum--which already has the best collection of his work anywhere--started a crop of new rumors about the possible destination of the huge collection of Picasso's own Picassos after his death.

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