Announcing "Picasso: 14 Sketchbooks, 1900-1959"

We’re pleased to announce our upcoming presentation Picasso: 14 Sketchbooks, 1900-1959, opening at our 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York later this year to mark the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death. Organized in collaboration with the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Madrid (FABA)—with whom our gallery has maintained a longstanding relationship—this exhibition of Picasso’s sketchbooks will offer a unique and intimate view of the ways in which the artist worked, tracing the evolution of his observations and ideas into plans for his compositions across painting and sculpture.

On view from November 10 to December 23, Picasso: 14 Sketchbooks, 1900-1959 will close out a year of global programming dedicated to the artist. As part of this monumental year of Picasso, we will produce a new, ongoing series of digital content centered on Picasso’s sketchbooks in the months leading up to the exhibition’s opening. Check our Journal page and social media channels for original essays, explainers, and teasers related to the show.

The sketchbooks featured in our forthcoming show in New York date between 1900 and 1959, spanning almost every period of Picasso’s career. Offering a window into Picasso’s imagination and creative process, each of the sketchbooks is connected to well-known bodies of work by the artist. These original sketchbooks will be exhibited alongside related ceramics, paintings, photographs, films, and archival materials to shed light on Picasso’s methodology. All sketchbooks will also be contextualized by a rich body of research assembled by curatorial advisors and Picasso experts Marilyn McCully and Michael Raeburn.

14 Sketchbooks will open nearly 40 years after our presentation of Je Suis le Cahier: The Sketchbooks of Picasso, a landmark exhibition organized by Arne and Marc Glimcher at our East 57th Street space in 1986. Je Suis le Cahier, the first exhibition to introduce Picasso’s sketchbooks to the world, traveled to numerous art institutions internationally following its run in New York. A catalogue devoted to this exhibition—edited by Arne and Marc Glimcher—remains a key resource on the artist.

This year, Pace Publishing will produce a new book focused on the sketchbooks in our upcoming exhibition in New York. Further details about Picasso: 14 Sketchbooks and this accompanying publication will be revealed in due course.