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
Pablo Picasso: October 25, 1881-April 8, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-04-20 to 1973-06-03
A View of the Century
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1964-11-24 to 1964-12-19
One Hundred Years of French Painting, 1860-1960
- Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, 1961 to 1961
- Oakland Museum, 1961 to 1961
Pablo Picasso
- Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1960 to 1960
- University of California, Riverside, to
The Artist Speaks
- Los Angeles, Los Angeles Municipal Art Commission, 1958-03 to 1958-03
Paintings and Graphic Works by Picasso
- La Jolla, La Jolla Art Center, 1957-08 to 1957-08
- University of California, Riverside, to
Picasso: Paintings, Drawings
- San Antonio, Marion Koogler McKay Art Institute, 1954-10 to 1954-10
From Cezanne to Picasso
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1941 to 1941
French Paintings
- San Diego, San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, 1941 to 1941
"Bonne fête" Monsieur Picasso, from Southern California Collectors
- Los Angeles, University of California, Los Angeles, Art Gallery, 1961-10-05 to 1961-11-12
The Cubist Epoch
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1970-12-15 to 1971-02-21
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971-04-07 to 1971-06-07
Picassos in Southern California: A Tribute to the Artist at 90
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971-10-25 to 1971-11-21
Seven Decades of Picasso
- Norton Simon Museum, 1984 to 1986
Seven Decades of Picasso
- Norton Simon Museum, 1979-10-11 to 1980
Reinstallation of South Wing
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-10-07 to 1995-08-13
Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California
- Norton Simon Museum, 2017-04-07 to 2017-09-25
From Europe to California: Galka Scheyer and the Avant-Garde
- Norton Simon Museum, 2003-05-16 to 2003-10-13
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
The Spirit of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in the New World
- Norton Simon Museum, 1994-11-17 to 1996-01-14
- Cahiers d' Art, nos. 7, 8, 9, 10
- Breton, André, Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, 1928, pl. 4
- Zervos, Christian, Pablo Picasso: Oeuvres de 1912 à 1917, 1942, no. 380
- Cooper, Douglas, Cubism and the Cubist Epoch, 1970, pl. 213 pp. 191, 192
- Cachin, Françoise; and Fiorella Minervino, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Picasso 1907-1916, 1972, no. 593
- The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, 1976, no. 427
- Daix, Pierre; and Joan Rosselet, Picasso: The Cubist Years 1907-1916, 1979, no. 563 pp. 130, 132, 296
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 186
- Palau i Fabre, Josep, Picasso Cubism (1907-1917), 1990, fig. 873 p. 308
- de la Beaumelle, Agnes, La beauté convulsive, 1991, pp. 56-57
- Barnett, Vivian Endicott, The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum, 2002, no. 404 pp. 401-403
- Bannard, D., Artforum, 2004, p. 23
- Gilbert Holzgang, Galka Scheyer : Ein Leben für Kunst und Kreativität, 2023, p. 271 (ill.)
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