Just off busy Houston Street and
tucked away inside a sleepy central courtyard of apartment buildings in lower
Manhattan sits a massive Picasso sculpture. I discovered the Bust of Sylvette
(1967) one day when I was wandering around New York with no particular place to
go after checking out the annual Armory Show. She is about 6 stories high and is made
of a granular concrete with dark sandblasted lines. Picasso's famous Cubist
method is rendered by three-dimensional folds allowing the viewer to have
different points of perspective into one complete essence of the piece. These bends in the
concrete allow shards of sunlight to play on and around the sculpture. I
recently saw two small painted metallic mock-ups at the Black and White Picasso
show at the Guggenheim. Here, those comparatively tiny models (just twenty-six
inches high) have come to life. The giant reinterpretation was executed by the world-famous Spaniard in coordination with Norwegian artist, Carl Nesjar.
The two sides of Sylvette
The model for the piece, a young nineteen year old Sylvette
David, appears in the work of Picasso's later years as the "girl with the blonde
ponytail". After achieving fame across Europe for being Picasso's muse and
for her striking good looks, she later changed her name to Lydia to validate
her own art career.
The Brutalist style buildings
surrounding the Sylvette sculpture in lower Manhattan are designed by I.M. Pei
are part of the NYU Campus. The sculpture itself was a gift to NYU by Mr. and
Mrs. Allan D. Emil (philanthropist, patron of the arts, and notable lawyer) in
1968. A similar public sculpture was purchased by the city of Rotterdam.
Picasso himself never visited the United States, but this giant artwork
certainly makes his presence felt.
I lived in apartment 9C in the East NYU building between Bleecker and Houston and watched Nesjar build the Statue. It was Winter and cold and windy. Nesjar was an accomplished carpenter and the form he built to hold the poured concrete was massive. The core was black basalt with a skim coat of grey concrete. Nesjar basically “drew” the lines with his sandblaster. As I remember him he was a very large Scandinavian man with a heavy beard. He showed up to work everyday regardless of the weather. I still live in Manhattan on 27th st. 56 years later. Karl.
ReplyDeleteGreat article and story. Amazing 👏
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