Representations of the body form the cornerstone of this major publication focusing on Picasso’s sculpture, published for the first Spanish exhibition on this theme, at the Museo Picasso in Málaga and the Guggenheim Bilbao. Assembled by Carmen Giménez, the Museo Picasso Málaga’s first director, it includes a careful selection of sculptures that illustrates the tremendous plurality of styles in which Picasso explored and expanded forms of three-dimensional representation of the human body.

Picasso used all the materials at his disposal in his sculptures—wood, bronze, iron, cement, steel and plaster—a fact that expresses the primacy of the medium for him. The human body likewise proved an enduring source of fascination and creative reinvention for the artist, and his sculptural work ingeniously balances deformation and sensuality across the span of his prodigious career.