Woman tears Picasso Actor

A notable painting by Picasso will undergo repairs after a visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York accidentally lost her balance and collided with the artwork, tearing the canvas.

The museum said the accident caused a vertical tear of about 6 inches in the lower right-hand corner of The Actor, painted by the celebrated Spanish artist during the winter of 1904-1905.

The museum, located on the eastern edge of New York’s Central Park, did not elaborate on why the woman fell.

The painting was taken immediately to the museum’s paintings conservation studio for treatment. The museum said the damage didn’t affect the “focal point of the composition”.

Curatorial and conservation staff assessed the painting’s condition following the accident.

The nearly 6-by-4-foot canvas depicts an acrobat posed dramatically against an abstracted backdrop. The museum has about 250 works by Picasso in its collection.

The painting will be displayed, as planned, in the forthcoming exhibition Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art that will be on view from April 27 to August 1, 2010.

Picasso painted The Actor on an unusually large canvas that already had another painting on it.

It inaugurated Picasso’s shift from the Blue Period world of tattered beggars and blind musicians to the Rose Period imagery of itinerant acrobats dressed in costumes taken from the commedia dell’arte.

The Actor has been displayed prominently ever since it was given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art by automobile heiress Thelma Chrysler Foy in 1952, and has been included in many major exhibitions of Picasso’s work in Europe and America.