On a day trip down to Princeton, NJ, just to look around and explore the town, I learned from looking at a map that there was a Picasso sculpture on the campus of Princeton University. Being a huge fan of Picasso’s art work (and not knowing what the sculpture was), I wanted to find it to see it firsthand.
I did find it, and as you can see above, it seems to be in an odd spot – next to a dorm building, behind a fence, tucked between some trees. It wasn’t even accessible from the nearby walking path, I had to walk around some bushes to get next to it. From what I later learned, it used to be positioned right in front of the Princeton Art Museum – which makes a lot more sense – but was moved to this current location in 2019.
Location aside, it was still fun to see a large-scale Picasso sculpture, in this case, a giant head made out of concrete. Below are views from both the left and right side.
A closer look also allowed a view looking up from the front, as well as a back view, as you can see below. There was a bronze plaque at the base of the sculpture with the title: “Head of Woman,” from 1962, and mention that it was “executed by Carl Nesjar in 1971.” This was interesting to me – it certainly makes sense that Picasso himself might not have his hands on creating the actual massive concrete sculpture, that he would have help – but Carl Nesjar was a new name for me. A little research shows that Carl Nesjar (1920-2015) was a Norwegian painter, sculptor and graphic artist who also collaborated with Picasso as his fabricator to transform Picasso’s drawings and scale models into large public sculptures. He worked with Picasso for over 20 years, starting in the 1950s and worked together to complete over 30 sculptures up until Picasso’s death in 1973.
If you want to see it for yourself, look in this area here.