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Lot Essay
Picasso's sojourn in the Spanish town of Horta del Ebro during the spring and summer of 1909 was extremely productive, and would prove to be a pivotal stage in the development of Cubism. He completed numerous landscapes, figure and portrait paintings of his companion Fernande Olivier, but only a couple of still-lifes. In these paintings he worked out his method of faceting the forms in his subjects. By concentrating on the overall architecture in his compositions, and relating the parts to the whole in a structurally convincing manner, he was now able to render objects with more solidity and firmness, and lend them greater weight and presence. He developed a more consistent technique for transitioning between elements (passage), which allowed him to assemble and unify complex structures within the pictorial space.
Picasso returned to Paris in September. Within a few weeks he moved out of his living quarters and studio in the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, and rented more spacious and upscale rooms at 11, boulevard de Clichy, near the place Pigalle. He and Fernande engaged a maid, and the apartment soon filled up with new furnishings and bric-a-brac that they bought during their walks in the neighborhood. The artist developed a renewed interest in painting the still-life, and many of these objects soon found their way into his paintings.
As he had done in the past, Picasso turned to the paintings of Paul Cézanne for guidance. Years later he told his friend Brassaï, "As if I didn't know Cézanne! He was my one and only master! Don't you think I looked at his paintings? I spent years studying them. Cézanne! He was like the father of us all" (quoted in Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso, Chicago, 1999, p. 107). Picasso took the apple--the basic unit, as it were, in a Cézanne still-life--and analytically "tore" into it, as if he had carved up the real fruit with a knife and corer. He executed a series of drawings and watercolors of apples that autumn (cf. Zervos, vol. 2*, nos. 180 and 181; vol. 6, no. 1100; and Palau i Fabre, Cubism, no. 452). He broke down the spherical aspect of the apple into curving bands that wrap around each other, which create the effect that he has penetrated inwards toward the core. At the same time, these forms appear to spiral and unfold outwards, just as the living fruit itself grows and ripens.
In this de- and reconstructed configuration, Picasso's apples reflected, in microcosm, the ongoing conceptualization of cubist practice, and as such, they became key and germinal elements in various still-life paintings done that fall (cf. Zervos, vol., 2*, nos. 185-186, 190, 192 and 229). Daix referred to this process of analysis, which was the next crucial step in the development of Cubism, as "the shattering of the closed form" (in P. Daix and J. Rosselet, Picasso: The Cubist Years, London, 1979, p. 247).
At the same time he was making drawings, Picasso was also modeling sculptures in plaster--the large, well-known Tête de Fernande (Spies, no. 24), and a small apple (Spies, no. 26; fig.1). John Richardson has written, "Picasso has taken a knife to the plaster apple and facetted it like a prism. For all its smallness, it has an imposing presence: a monument to an apple, also apparently a portrait of one. (Picasso gave the apple he claimed to have worked from to the Czech collector Vincenc Kramár, who preserved the shriveled memento until he died)" (in A Life of Picasso, Volume II: 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 140.) Jean Sutherland Boggs observed that "If [the apple sculpture] were much enlarged, it would be as if he had built roads, which he never permits to continue, and excavated cliffs, from which there is no escape, in his desire to make us experience the apple's three dimensions. It was like his modeling of the head of Fernande to be cast in bronze later that year, both the result of his admiration for Cézanne" (in Picasso & Things, exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, p. 75).
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Pomme, plaster, fall 1909; Musée Picasso, Paris.
Picasso returned to Paris in September. Within a few weeks he moved out of his living quarters and studio in the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, and rented more spacious and upscale rooms at 11, boulevard de Clichy, near the place Pigalle. He and Fernande engaged a maid, and the apartment soon filled up with new furnishings and bric-a-brac that they bought during their walks in the neighborhood. The artist developed a renewed interest in painting the still-life, and many of these objects soon found their way into his paintings.
As he had done in the past, Picasso turned to the paintings of Paul Cézanne for guidance. Years later he told his friend Brassaï, "As if I didn't know Cézanne! He was my one and only master! Don't you think I looked at his paintings? I spent years studying them. Cézanne! He was like the father of us all" (quoted in Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso, Chicago, 1999, p. 107). Picasso took the apple--the basic unit, as it were, in a Cézanne still-life--and analytically "tore" into it, as if he had carved up the real fruit with a knife and corer. He executed a series of drawings and watercolors of apples that autumn (cf. Zervos, vol. 2*, nos. 180 and 181; vol. 6, no. 1100; and Palau i Fabre, Cubism, no. 452). He broke down the spherical aspect of the apple into curving bands that wrap around each other, which create the effect that he has penetrated inwards toward the core. At the same time, these forms appear to spiral and unfold outwards, just as the living fruit itself grows and ripens.
In this de- and reconstructed configuration, Picasso's apples reflected, in microcosm, the ongoing conceptualization of cubist practice, and as such, they became key and germinal elements in various still-life paintings done that fall (cf. Zervos, vol., 2*, nos. 185-186, 190, 192 and 229). Daix referred to this process of analysis, which was the next crucial step in the development of Cubism, as "the shattering of the closed form" (in P. Daix and J. Rosselet, Picasso: The Cubist Years, London, 1979, p. 247).
At the same time he was making drawings, Picasso was also modeling sculptures in plaster--the large, well-known Tête de Fernande (Spies, no. 24), and a small apple (Spies, no. 26; fig.1). John Richardson has written, "Picasso has taken a knife to the plaster apple and facetted it like a prism. For all its smallness, it has an imposing presence: a monument to an apple, also apparently a portrait of one. (Picasso gave the apple he claimed to have worked from to the Czech collector Vincenc Kramár, who preserved the shriveled memento until he died)" (in A Life of Picasso, Volume II: 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 140.) Jean Sutherland Boggs observed that "If [the apple sculpture] were much enlarged, it would be as if he had built roads, which he never permits to continue, and excavated cliffs, from which there is no escape, in his desire to make us experience the apple's three dimensions. It was like his modeling of the head of Fernande to be cast in bronze later that year, both the result of his admiration for Cézanne" (in Picasso & Things, exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, p. 75).
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Pomme, plaster, fall 1909; Musée Picasso, Paris.