Scratching the Surface,

Two Picassos Revealed

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Picasso painted "Woman Ironing" when he was in his 20s. And like so many struggling young artists he often reused old canvases. He first began painting a portrait of a man with a mustache; abandoned it and several years later turned the canvas upside down and painted the image of a skeletal woman ironing over it. The ghost of the man underneath was first detected with an infrared camera in 1989. "Woman Ironing" was recently cleaned and restored by the Guggenheim Museum and is now on display as part of the exhibition, "Picasso Black and White." --Carol Vogel