Picasso’s sketchbooks first appeared in 1986, when the Pace Gallery organized I am the notebook—a groundbreaking exhibition in New York of 45 sketchbooks, which later traveled to museums around the world, including the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and the Kunsthaus from Zürich.
Today, 50 years after Picasso’s death on April 8, 1973, the gallery is once again presenting an exhibition in New York of 14 of the artist’s sketchbooks, created between 1900 and 1959. Opening this fall (November 10-23 December), the books will be exhibited alongside ceramics, paintings, photographs, films and related archival material.
Installation view of I am the notebook – Picasso’s sketchbooks To the Pace Gallery, 32 East 57th Street, New York, May 2 – August 1, 1986 Photo courtesy of Pace Gallery
Picasso used his sketchbooks constantly, creating them alongside well-known works, although he kept them private during his lifetime. One, dating from 1907 and to be exhibited in New York, contains a series of figure studies which were incorporated into the artist’s painting later that year, The Ladies of Avignon. Another, completed during his honeymoon with Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova in Biarritz in 1918, includes an unknown self-portrait. A third album, dating from 1924 and created in Juan-les-Pins on the Côte d’Azur, opens with 18 pages of pen variations on guitars.
All sketchbooks have been borrowed from private collections and are not for sale. A spokeswoman notes that Picasso’s estate “does not specifically work with any gallery”, but notes that Pace “has worked with members of the Picasso family for over 40 years”. The New York fair was organized in collaboration with the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso in Madrid.
