Picasso and Paper

Text by Violette Andres, Stephen Coppel, Ann Dumas, Emmanuelle Hincelin, Christopher Lloyd, Emilia Philippot, Johan Popelard, Claustre Rafart Planas, William H. Robinson. How Picasso’s genius seized the potential of paper throughout his career Picasso’s artistic output is astonishing in its ambition and variety. Picasso and Paper examines a particular aspect of his legendary capacity for invention: his imaginative and original use of paper. He used it as a support for autonomous works, including etchings, prints and drawings, as well as for his papier-collé experiments of the 1910s and his revolutionary three-dimensional “constructions,” made of cardboard, paper and string. Sometimes his use of paper was simply determined by circumstance: in occupied Paris, where art supplies were in short supply, he ripped up paper tablecloths to make works of art. And of course, his works on paper comprise the preparatory stages of some of his very greatest paintings. With reproductions of nearly 400