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Lot Essay
‘If Cubism is an art of transition I am sure that the only thing that will come out of it is another form of Cubism’
(Picasso, quoted in K.E. Silver, Esprit des Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925, London, 1989, p. 350)
Pablo Picasso’s Citron et verre was painted in the summer of 1922, while the artist was holidaying with his wife Olga and young son Paulo in the fashionable northern beach resort of Dinard. Here he created a series of small cubist still-lifes, of which Citron et verre is one, that are jewel-like in their use of dazzling colour, ornate patterning and complex construction. The simple trio of objects – a lemon, glass and another indistinguishable object – are depicted with simple linear outlines, their forms accentuated and united by several horizontally striated passages that when set against the flat geometric planes of colour express a sense of volume and space. Exemplifying the artist’s continued development of Synthetic Cubism, this painting shows the artist using his cubist discoveries in a decorative, simplified and playful way, a reflection of the happily contented life he was leading at this time.
Citron et verre also embodies the eclecticism of Picasso’s art during this post-war period. Just the previous summer, the artist, while staying at Fontainebleau, had created a series of large, classical nudes. Rendered with exaggerated, volumetric forms, these statuesque figurative works were a radical contrast from the flattened, fragmented world of Picasso’s concurrent Cubism. During the summer of 1922 at Dinard, Picasso again returned to the theme of Classicism, painting, alongside Citron et verre and this series of cubist still-lifes, the large, Neo-Classical Deux femmes courant sur la plage (Musée Picasso, Paris). With all of these works, Picasso was ceaselessly exploring the concept and possibilities of form. From abstraction to representation, illusion and reality, volume and flatness, the artist, with an astounding ease, moved between these stylistic paradoxes to create a body of work that continues to intrigue. Citron et verre was first owned by Lynne Thompson, an American collector based in Maine, whose collection included Pollock, Rothko, Klee and Picasso.
(Picasso, quoted in K.E. Silver, Esprit des Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925, London, 1989, p. 350)
Pablo Picasso’s Citron et verre was painted in the summer of 1922, while the artist was holidaying with his wife Olga and young son Paulo in the fashionable northern beach resort of Dinard. Here he created a series of small cubist still-lifes, of which Citron et verre is one, that are jewel-like in their use of dazzling colour, ornate patterning and complex construction. The simple trio of objects – a lemon, glass and another indistinguishable object – are depicted with simple linear outlines, their forms accentuated and united by several horizontally striated passages that when set against the flat geometric planes of colour express a sense of volume and space. Exemplifying the artist’s continued development of Synthetic Cubism, this painting shows the artist using his cubist discoveries in a decorative, simplified and playful way, a reflection of the happily contented life he was leading at this time.
Citron et verre also embodies the eclecticism of Picasso’s art during this post-war period. Just the previous summer, the artist, while staying at Fontainebleau, had created a series of large, classical nudes. Rendered with exaggerated, volumetric forms, these statuesque figurative works were a radical contrast from the flattened, fragmented world of Picasso’s concurrent Cubism. During the summer of 1922 at Dinard, Picasso again returned to the theme of Classicism, painting, alongside Citron et verre and this series of cubist still-lifes, the large, Neo-Classical Deux femmes courant sur la plage (Musée Picasso, Paris). With all of these works, Picasso was ceaselessly exploring the concept and possibilities of form. From abstraction to representation, illusion and reality, volume and flatness, the artist, with an astounding ease, moved between these stylistic paradoxes to create a body of work that continues to intrigue. Citron et verre was first owned by Lynne Thompson, an American collector based in Maine, whose collection included Pollock, Rothko, Klee and Picasso.