Lot Essay
In the years between 1919 and 1923, Picasso produced works of many styles, naturalistic as well as classical, while continuing to work in a Synthetic Cubist style.
By the summer of 1919 Picasso was working once again on the series of still-lifes with landscape backgrounds. The composition of the present work is complex, with greater varieties of tones than seen in earlier still-lifes. The volumes and the three-dimensional structures are created by cut-outs and the inter-relationships of color planes. Picasso became at this stage more interested in forms, perhaps a reaction against his earlier Analytical Cubism, and became more decorative in the process.
Cocteau must have had Picasso's canvases of this period in mind when he wrote "the works of one who runs faster than beauty will seem ugly but he will compel beauty to catch up with him." (P. Daix, Picasso, London, 1965, p. 114)
By the summer of 1919 Picasso was working once again on the series of still-lifes with landscape backgrounds. The composition of the present work is complex, with greater varieties of tones than seen in earlier still-lifes. The volumes and the three-dimensional structures are created by cut-outs and the inter-relationships of color planes. Picasso became at this stage more interested in forms, perhaps a reaction against his earlier Analytical Cubism, and became more decorative in the process.
Cocteau must have had Picasso's canvases of this period in mind when he wrote "the works of one who runs faster than beauty will seem ugly but he will compel beauty to catch up with him." (P. Daix, Picasso, London, 1965, p. 114)