Pablo Picasso Paintings in Chicago — Where to See Them

Pablo Picasso’s connection to Chicago is substantial but largely institutional: he never lived or trained in the city and never visited the United States, yet Chicago became one of the earliest and most sustained American homes for his work. The Art Institute of Chicago was the first U.S. museum to show Picasso’s work during the Armory Show in February 1913, inaugurating a century-long relationship. ¹ Chicago’s Arts Club presented Picasso’s first U.S. solo exhibition, Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso, March 20–April 22, 1923, establishing an early market and critical audience there. ² Major museum moments followed: the Museum of Modern Art’s traveling retrospective “Picasso: Forty Years of His Art” was shown at the Art Institute (Feb 1–Mar 3, 1940), further cementing Chicago’s role in presenting large-scale Picasso surveys. ³ In public art, Picasso gave Chicago an iconic landmark when his untitled monumental sculpture (commonly called “The Picasso”) was unveiled in Civic Center Plaza on August 15, 1967. ⁴ Subsequent exhibitions—most notably the Art Institute’s 2013 “Picasso and Chicago”—have continued to trace and deepen that civic relationship. ¹⁵