Paper pictures
Country Life UK|February 05, 2020
Caroline Bugler is thrilled by an exhibition that traces Picasso’s entire career through his work on and with paper
Paper pictures

PICASSO loved paper and he never threw a scrap of it away, firmly believing that ‘one is what one keeps’.

A visit to the massive archives of the Musée Picasso in a suburb of Paris, from which about 80% of the loans to this exhibition came, reveals exactly how extensive his paper collection was. Not only did he keep thousands of sketches and graphic works, he also hoarded all manner of paper ephemera, including bus tickets, letters, newsprint, pieces of wallpaper and bottle labels. Many of these fragments made surprising reappearances in his art: magazine photographs were doctored with comic figures, slivers of ugly wallpaper or pages from newspapers were incorporated into collages; a paper napkin was torn to resemble his lover Dora Maar’s beloved pet dog after it died.

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