Major Picasso exhibition in New York

Members of the media got a preview of the 300 works by Pablo Picasso at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, yesterday.

The opportunity to see one of the most important collections in the world of the artist's work opens to the public April 27, in New York museum.

The Metropolitan said "This landmark exhibition is the first to focus exclusively on works by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in the museum's collection.

"It features 300 works, including the museum's complete holdings of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics by Picasso - never before seen in their entirety - as well as a selection of the artist's prints.

"The museum's collection reflects the full breadth of the artist's multi-sided genius as it asserted itself over the course of his long and influential career.

"Notable for its remarkable constellation of early figure paintings, which include the commanding At The Lapin Agile (1905) and the iconic portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906), the museum's collection also stands apart for its exceptional cache of drawings, which remain relatively little known, despite their importance and number.

"The key subjects that variously sustained Picasso's interest - the pensive harle-quins of his Blue and Rose periods, the faceted figures and tabletop still lifes of his cubist years, the monumental heads and classicising bathers of the 1920s, the raging bulls and dreaming nudes of the 1930s, and the rakish cavaliers and musketeers of his final years - are amply represented by works ranging in date from a dashing self-portrait of 1900 (Self-Portrait 'Yo') to the fanciful Standing Nude and Seated Musketeer painted nearly 70 years later."

The exhibition, titled Picasso In The Metropolitan Museum Of Art runs between April 27 and August 1.