“Drawing was Picasso’s primary medium for thinking, problem solving, invention, and personal expression,” according to the Frick Collection, whose exhibition of Picasso’s drawings opened on Tuesday. “It was the link that connected his work in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, theater design, and ceramics, and was a direct tie to his predecessors. Picasso’s diverse body of original work on paper broke new ground, while also consciously incorporating aspects of the tradition from which it sprang.”

“Picasso’s Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition” displays more than sixty drawings executed in a wide variety of media, beginning with a traditional plaster cast study from his training under José Ruiz Blasco and continuing with examples from his Rose, Cubist, and Neoclassical periods. The associated calendar at the Frick Collection is busy with lectures through January, featuring in-house curators and distinguished speakers from other institutions.

“The past decade has witnessed a spurt of activity focusing on Picasso’s relationship with the Old Masters and his nineteenth-century predecessors, as well as with non-Western arts,” says the exhibition’s organizer, Susan Grace Galassi, a Senior Curator at the Frick who will be speaking on January 7. “However, this topic has not been examined specifically in terms of his drawing, where many of these references and relationships first appear. As drawing is a common language passed down and embellished by artists over generations, this particular area of the art of Picasso seemed ready-made for exploration.”

“Picasso’s Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition” runs through January 8 at the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, between Madison and Fifth avenues, 212-288-0700, frick.org.

Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer.