Chicago’s collection of public art was initiated on August 15, 1967, when Mayor Richard J. Daley dedicated an untitled sculpture commonly known as “The Picasso” in Chicago’s new Civic Center (now the Richard J. Daley Center). Just four years earlier, architect William Hartmann of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill had approached Pablo Picasso with the commission. The artist accepted and crafted two steel maquettes; he kept one in his studio and gave the other to the architect to use in planning. The sculpture’s presence inspired private and public investment in more works for the cityscape over the years, including recent additions in nearby Millennium Park.
Milwaukee Art Museum, Controversial Public Art: From Rodin to di Suvero, exh. cat. (Milwaukee, Wis.: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1983), p. 40, cat. 32.
Sylvie Forestier, Pablo Picasso, La Guerre et la Paix (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1991), pp. 83–84, fig. 66.
Carsten-Peter Warncke, Pablo Picasso 1881–1973 II (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1992), p. 579 (ill.).
Werner Spies, Picasso: Das Plastiche Werk (Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, 1998), pp. 370 and 403, no. 643.2b (ill.).
The Picasso Project, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, and Sculpture: A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue 1885–1973, The Sixties II 1964–1967 (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 2002), p. 133, no. 64–373 (ill.).
La epoca de Picasso: donaciones a los museos americanos (Santander: Fundación Marcelino Botín, 2004), pp. 43 and 247.
Michael Fitzgerald, Picasso and American Art, Exh. cat. (Yale University Press, 2006), p. 258, ill. 260, pl. 133.
Stephanie D’Alessandro and Renée DeVoe Mertz, The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2014), 13, fig. 5 (color ill.).
London, Tate Gallery, Picasso Sculpture, Ceramics, Graphic Work, June 9–August 13, 1967, p. 108, cat. 203 (ill.).
New York, Museum of Modern Art, The Sculpture of Picasso, October 9, 1967–January 7, 1968, pp. 206 and 225, cat. 204 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Picasso in Chicago, February 3–March 31, 1968, hors cat..
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Picasso Retrospective, May 1–September 16, 1980, p. 442 (ill.).
Milwaukee Art Museum, Controversial Public Art: From Rodin to di Suvero, October 21, 1983–January 15, 1984, p. 40, cat. 32.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Picasso and American Art, September 28, 2006–January 28, 2007, pp. 254, 258, 260, pl. 133, and 387; traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, February 25–May 28 2007, and Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, June 17–September 9, 2007.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Picasso Sculpture, September 14, 2015–February 7, 2016; Paris, Musée Picasso, March 8-August 28, 2016.
The artist; given to the Art Institute, 1966.
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