Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) is generally acknowledged to be the greatest draftsman of the 20th century. The Frick Collection and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., have co-organized an exhibition for 2011 –12 that will look at the dazzling development of Picasso’s drawings, from the precocious academic exercises of his youth in the 1890s to the virtuoso classical works of the early 1920s. The show opens at the Frick in October 2011 and moves on to the National Gallery of Art in February 2012 .

Through a selection of more than 50 works at each venue, the presentation will examine the artist’s stylistic experiments and techniques in this roughly 30-year period, which begins and ends in a classical mode and encompasses the radical innovations of cubism and collage.

The show will demonstrate how drawing served as an essential means of invention and discovery in Picasso’s multifaceted art, while its centrality in his vast oeuvre connects him deeply with the grand tradition of European masters. Indeed, the exhibition will bring to the fore his complex engagement with artists of the near and distant past and will explore the diverse ways he competed with the virtuoso techniques of his predecessors and perpetuated them in revitalized form.

Picasso’s Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition features loans from important public and private collections in Europe and the United States and is accompanied by a full-color catalogue of the same name.