By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER EAST SIDE — Beginning next Tuesday, April 27, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is offering a first-ever exclusive focus on its collected works of Pablo Picasso.
The exhibit, which will run through Aug. 1, brings together 300 works including paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics and prints. It includes 1930s era nudes, Blue and Rose period harlequins and Cubist still lifes.
In order to prepare for the exhibit, the museum’s staff examined every painting using infrared reflectography and x-rays. This process unveiled many earlier pictures layered underneath the paint of known works.
“We were not aware of how extensive that was,” Gary Tinterow, the museum’s curator of 19th century modern and contemporary art, said at a press conference.
“It’s as if he was using it as a blackboard, making the paintings, and then not erasing it but over-painting it with a new composition.”
Underneath those layers, the museum found paintings previously considered lost. Scholars knew many of these works existed because Picasso had mentioned them in his studies, but no one had ever seen them.
Picasso’s iconic 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein, the museum’s first acquisition by the artist, is also featured. Gifts from over 25 other donors will be on display.
