Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

During the early 1920s, Picasso tirelessly explored the pictorial possibilities offered by the juxtaposition of still life elements, often utilizing a variation on a combination of a stringed instrument (either a guitar or a mandolin), fruit-bowl and glass bottle, placed on a sideboard, an ornate pedestal, or a simple wooden table. With their fragmented forms and flattened planes, these compositions represent a continuation of Picasso's cubist explorations of the previous decade.

The present still life was painted during the summer of 1922 in Dinard, a popular resort town on the northwestern coast of France. The three objects are united by several horizontally striated passages, powerful linear black shading that when set against blocks of color express volume and space. The dominant hues of the painting--lush reds and pinks, turquoise, sky blue and yellow--echo the summer palette of the ocean and beach. With the sobriety of the war years behind him, Gertrude Stein notes that "during this time his pictures were very brilliant in color, the cubic forms were continually being replaced by surface and lines, the lines were more important than anything else, they lived by and in themselves, he painted his pictures not by means of his objects, but by the lines" (G. Stein, Picasso, London, 1938, pp. 27-28). John Richardson also points out that the still lifes from this period "are astonishingly varied in their dazzling colors, elaborate patterning, rich textures and complex compositions. No longer did Picasso feel obliged to investigate the intricate formal and spatial problems that had preoccupied him ten years before. Instead he felt free to relax and exploit his cubist discoveries in a decorative manner that delights the eye" (Picasso, An American Tribute, exh. cat., New York, 1962).