NARRATOR:
Picasso believed the artist must have an “affectionate relationship” with his subject—and Picasso loved women. Guitars were also among his favorite subjects. These themes are the starting points for Picasso’s Woman with Guitar. Using the Cubist method he invented with Georges Braque, he analyzed them—split them into fragments, “destroyed” them, then reassembled, restructured his ingredients—reinventing them in the process. Picasso said:
PICASSO (ACTOR):
“When you begin a picture, you often make some pretty discoveries. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist doesn’t really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of the discarded finds.”
NARRATOR:
The result is visual shorthand—forms radically simplified into rigorous geometric patterns. Sometimes Picasso incorporated collage elements, such as pieces of real newspaper. Here, he painted two sections to simulate cut-up wallpaper. As in all Cubist works, we see the subject from multiple viewpoints simultaneously, relating spatial relationships in a new way.
Even here, during its most abstract phase, known as Analytic Cubism, a few remnants of the visible world survive—fingers holding a guitar…the instrument’s sound hole…the angled lines of the player’s arms…. Such signs of the original subject, Picasso said, “live their own life, as part of the overall pattern.”
Woman with a Guitar
1913
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
On View
Painted in early 1913, this composition exemplifies the style known as Synthetic Cubism. At left, a fragment of green faux-marble paneling evokes the interior of a Parisian cafe, while a series of circles, lines, and curves arranged along the central vertical axis suggests facial features, a guitar, and a hand grasping the instrument’s neck. Picasso’s previous work in papier collé (a form of collage) here inflects his practice as a painter, layering a trompe l’oeil element (the highly realistic faux-marble slab) over an emphatically abstract line drawing. As in many Cubist portraits, the gender of the sitter, and even the type of instrument, portrayed here have been subject to interpretation. Titled “Femme avec une guitare” (Woman with a Guitar) in the inventory of Daniel Kahnweiler, the artist’s principal dealer in the 1910s, the picture was variously described by subsequent owners and critics as “Personnage tenant une mandoline” (Person Holding a Mandolin) and “Joueur de mandoline” (Male Mandolin Player).
Details
- Artist Name: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
- Title: Woman with a Guitar
- Date: 1913
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 39-5/8 x 32-1/8 in. (100 x 81.6 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection
- Accession Number: P.1953.073
- Copyright: © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
The artist, to;
[Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, Paris, probably sold to];
Wilhelm Uhde, Paris ( his sale Hotel Drouot, Paris, 30 May 1921, lot 49, probably sold to);
Christian Tetzen-Lund, Copenhagen, sold to;
[Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Paris];
André Breton, Paris; Marie Cuttoli, Paris, probably by 1928, sold 1939 to;
Galka Scheyer;
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, 1953-1954;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena,1954-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, 1975.
[Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, Paris, probably sold to];
Wilhelm Uhde, Paris ( his sale Hotel Drouot, Paris, 30 May 1921, lot 49, probably sold to);
Christian Tetzen-Lund, Copenhagen, sold to;
[Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Paris];
André Breton, Paris; Marie Cuttoli, Paris, probably by 1928, sold 1939 to;
Galka Scheyer;
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, 1953-1954;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena,1954-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, 1975.
- San Francisco Museum of Art, to
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum,1989, p. 186
- de la Beaumelle, Agnes, La beauté convulsive, pp. 56-57
- The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena,no. 427
- Barnett, Vivian Endicott, The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum,no. 404 pp. 401-403
- Zervos, Christian, Pablo Picasso: Oeuvres de 1912 à 1917,no. 380
- Breton, André, Le Surréalisme et la Peinture,pl. 4
- Bannard, D., Artforum, p. 23
- Cahiers d' Art,nos. 7, 8, 9, 10
- Cachin, Françoise; and Fiorella Minervino, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Picasso 1907-1916,no. 593
- Cooper, Douglas, Cubism and the Cubist Epoch,pl. 213 pp. 191, 192
- Daix, Pierre; and Joan Rosselet, Picasso: The Cubist Years 1907-1916,no. 563 pp. 130, 132, 296
- Palau i Fabre, Josep, Picasso Cubism (1907-1917),fig. 873 p. 308
Additional Artwork by Artist
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