As a child, Pablo Picasso amused his sister by making paper cutouts. Many decades later, his interest in this method of working was revived after seeing Henri Matisse’s colorful cut-paper compositions. The model for this large free-standing sculpture was translated into cut and folded sheet metal by Picasso’s collaborator Lionel Prejger. “Picasso seldom makes a drawing,” Prejger recounted, “but simply takes the paper in one hand and the scissors in the other, and begins to cut. Then the most important task, the folding begins: the folding is what produces the play of light in the finished sculpture.”