“Chair” | Pablo Picasso | 1961 | Painted sheet metal | 45 x 45 x 35″
As much as I loved Picasso’s quirky and disproportionate (as Picasso does) sculptures of the human figure, I was especially drawn to his white metal chair. Picasso used sheet metal, painted it white, and bent each piece at an angle to create this wacky, cubist chair. He doesn’t attempt functionality; the seat is slanted and there is a huge hole cut out of the back with a semi circle piece of metal poking out of the hole. The legs definitely don’t look sturdy enough to hold a person, but this is precisely what I love about the piece. Picasso took an everyday object like a chair and constructed it in a way that is totally absurd and unreasonable. I enjoy the simplicity in this piece as well. A lot of the other pieces in this exhibit depict people or are painted in bright colors and I like that this is a white, simple, geometric chair.
