Description
Bust of Sylvette is an 11-meter concrete portrait of a young woman designed by Pablo Picasso, standing in the courtyard of University Village, the NYU apartment towers on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. It is Picasso on a monumental scale, out in the open air.
The head, neck and pigtail of Sylvette David, the young model who posed for Picasso in 1954, are drawn in black and buff lines on a slab about 30 centimeters thick. Up close, the surface shows black basalt pebbles from Norway set into the concrete.
Picasso's original was a folded-metal model about 60 centimeters high. The Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar enlarged it in 1968 by sandblasting the concrete, a technique he called "betograve". The sculpture weighs about 54 tonnes and, with the towers by I. M. Pei around it, became a city landmark in 2008.
The head, neck and pigtail of Sylvette David, the young model who posed for Picasso in 1954, are drawn in black and buff lines on a slab about 30 centimeters thick. Up close, the surface shows black basalt pebbles from Norway set into the concrete.
Picasso's original was a folded-metal model about 60 centimeters high. The Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar enlarged it in 1968 by sandblasting the concrete, a technique he called "betograve". The sculpture weighs about 54 tonnes and, with the towers by I. M. Pei around it, became a city landmark in 2008.