Pablo Picasso: Controversial Sculptures & Last Works
Rare Exhibition
Picasso did not like to participate in art competitions and rarely joined in exhibitions. However the Philadelphia Museum of Art organized the 3rd Sculpture International Exhibition in 1949 where Picasso also participated with many other sculptors.
Controversial Sculpture
The Chicago administration commissioned Picasso’s services for making a maquette for a huge sculpture for display to public. This structure popularly known as the ‘Chicago Picasso’ was to be 50 foot high. Picasso worked on the sculpture with dedication and enthusiasm. It was unveiled in 1967 in downtown Chicago and to this day is the most widely recognized landmark of Chicago. He was paid $100000 for the work but he declined to accept it and instead donated the money to the people of Chicago. However the bizarre and ambiguous sculpture became a source of controversy as people could not make out what it intended to depict. This abstract piece of sculpture remained open to interpretation as to whether it denoted a woman or a horse or a bird or just an abstraction.
Final Works
Picasso kept experimenting with styles till the last days of his creation. As he grew older he started to devote all of his energy to his works producing them in combination of all the styles he had followed throughout his life. The period 1968 to 1971 proved to be prolific as in a last courageous burst of activity, he created many paintings and etchings on copperplates that had more color and emotions in them than even many of the previous works. However because of the whimsical and chaotic expressions of these works, these were interpreted by some people as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man gone mad. This they thought to be work of his waning genius. Even his ardent admirer Douglas Cooper succumbed to this view and branded his paintings as “incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old man”. It took the world to move beyond abstract expressionism to realize after his death that Picasso was actually pioneering neo-expressionism in art.
