Chicago Picasso

About

The Chicago Picasso (often just "The Picasso") is an untitled monumental sculpture by Pablo Picasso in Daley Plaza in Chicago, Illinois. The 1967 installation of the Picasso, wrote Ruth Lopez in The Art Newspaper, "precipitated an aesthetic shift in civic and urban planning, broadening the idea of public art beyond the commemorative."

The COR-TEN steel structure, dedicated on August 15, 1967, in the civic plaza in the Chicago Loop, is 50 feet (15.2 m) tall and weighs 162 short tons (147 metric tons). The Cubist sculpture by Picasso, who later said that it represented the head of his Afghan Hound Kabul, was the first monumental abstract public artwork in Downtown Chicago and has become a well-known landmark. Publicly accessible, it is known for its inviting jungle gym-like characteristics. Visitors to Daley Plaza can often be seen climbing on and sliding down the base of the sculpture.