Picasso, the Sculptor

It has often been claimed that the most important modern sculpture has been created by artists who were also, or even primarily, painters - Degas, Matisse, Derain and others. This impression has been strengthened by the ever-dominant figure of Picasso, who punctuated his long career with bouts of energetic sculpture-making, almost as time off from painting. Certainly his three-dimensional work, though it relates sometimes to the collage concerns of his pictures, can be deliberately lightweight as well as heavyweight. His pieces range from spindley frameworks of welded rods to huge, bulbous faces built up in plaster and cast in bronze, and humorous farm animals which have all the vitality of folk art. The sculptures sometimes have an almost throw-away charm, as in the famous Bull's Head evoked by a bicycle saddle and handlebars. The artist liked to think of the piece being thrown on to a scrap heap where someone might salvage it for bicycle parts - and then the creative cycle would be complete.