Picasso's oil portrait of Gertrude Stein will be included in the museum's expansive upcoming exhibit of its entire collection of his work. (Metropolitan Museum of Art/Associated Press)

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is set to unveil an extensive exhibit featuring its complete holdings of Pablo Picasso's artworks, including a painting recently repaired after a visitor fell onto it.

Set to open April 27, Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art features 300 pieces, including dozens of the artist's paintings, drawings, sculpture and ceramics and more than 200 rarely seen prints owned by the famed museum. It marks the first time the Met has showcased its entire Picasso collection.

The display spans the breadth of the Spanish-born artist's lengthy career, from early works he created at age 19 to those completed in the final years before his death in 1973. Its subjects range from his early harlequins to his faceted Cubist figures and still-lifes to his nudes, bathers, cavaliers and musketeers.

Among the pieces on display will be the Met's first Picasso acquisition: the 1906 portrait of Paris-based American writer Gertrude Stein that she left to the museum in her will.

Painted over many works

As part of the preparation for the forthcoming exhibit, restorers and conservation experts closely examined each painting, including by X-ray, and discovered that Picasso painted over, revised and corrected other existing compositions more often than originally thought, said curator Gary Tinterow.

This saved Picasso money "at a time when he was very poor ... when he wasn't selling very much," Tinterow said.

One of the pieces painted atop a pre-existing canvas was The Actor — the rose-period Picasso work recent repaired after a museum visitor stumbled into it and left a 15-centimetre gash in its lower right corner in January.

Created between 1904 and 1905, the oil canvas depicts an acrobat posed dramatically against an abstract background. Conservation experts discovered that The Actor appears on the reverse of a landscape covered with heavy paint.

Two valuable paintings for sale

Christie's will auction Picasso's 1932 work Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust. on May 4. (Christie's Images/Associated Press)

The Picasso exhibit will open just ahead of New York spring auction season, which will see two anticipated Picasso paintings cross the block and a potential new price ceiling set for the sale of his work.

On May 4, Christie's is offering Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, a 1932 painting of his mistress Marie-Therese Walker and a work that had belonged to California art patron Frances Lasker Brody. It is expected to sell for $70 million US to $90 million US.

A day later, Sotheby's will offer Femme au Chapeau, Buste, a 1965 work inspired by Picasso's second wife Jacqueline Roque and formerly owned by Patricia Kennedy Lawford, the sister of slain U.S. president John F. Kennedy. It is expected to fetch between $8 million US and $12 million US.

Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art runs until Aug. 1.

With files from The Associated Press