The Ram's Head
1925
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
On View

Spread on a blue and white tablecloth, this wild array both fulfills and defies the French term for still life: nature morte (“dead nature”). The slack jaw and sightless eyes of the ram’s head leave little doubt of its deadness, but a toothy fish bristling with scales, an octopus squirming in the lower left-hand corner, and a prickly sea urchin bring the composition to monstrous life. Picasso painted these fruits of the sea—framed by a lemon slice and a fleshy red anemone—during a summer spent at Juan-les-Pins, a town on the French Riviera. The picture’s gathering of un-dead creatures, however, seems far removed from the sunny glamour of the Mediterranean coast. The scene belongs to a 1925–1926 series sometimes called Picasso’s “still lifes of cruelty.”

Details

  • Artist Name: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
  • Title: The Ram's Head
  • Date: 1925
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 31 1/2 x 39 in. (80.0 x 99.1 cm)
  • Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. Alexandre P. Rosenberg
  • Accession Number: P.1978.6
  • Copyright: © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Object Information

Pablo Picasso, gift 1925? to;
Paul Rosenberg, Paris (until 1940) and New York, by inheritance to;
Alexandre P. Rosenberg, New York, offered 30 January 1975 and subsequently given as a gift 29 December 1978/13 November 1979 to;
Norton Simon Museum.

Exposition d'oeuvre récentes de Picasso

  • Paris, Paul Rosenberg, 1926-06-15 to 1926-07-10

Exposition Picasso

  • Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 1932-06-16 to 1932-07-30

Picasso

  • Kunsthaus Zürich, 1932-09-11 to 1932-10-30

Exhibition of Masterpieces by Braque-Matisse-Picasso

  • London, Rosenberg & Helft, Ltd., 1936-10-05 to 1936-10-31

Picasso, Forty Years of His Art

  • Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 1939-11 to 1940-01
  • Art Institute of Chicago, 1940-02 to 1940-03
  • City Art Museum of St. Louis, 1940-03 to 1940-04
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1940-04 to 1940-05
  • San Francisco Museum of Art, 1940-06 to 1940-07

Picasso, an American Tribute

  • New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., 1962-04-25 to 1962-05-12

Exposition d’oeuvres récentes de Picasso

  • Paris, Paul Rosenberg, 1936-03-03 to 1936-03-31

Significant Objects: The Spell of Still Life

  • Norton Simon Museum, 2012-07-20 to 2013-01-21

Reinstallation of South Wing

  • Norton Simon Museum, 1993-10-07 to 1995-08-13

Seven Decades of Picasso

  • Norton Simon Museum, 1979-10-11 to 1980
  • Cahiers d'Art, p. 165
  • Elsen, A., Purposes of Art, p. 49
  • Henning, E., Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, fig. 18 p. 201
  • Cahiers d'Art, 1932, p. 93
  • Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, 1939, no. 191 p. 125
  • Barr, Alfred H., Picasso: Fifty Years of his Art, 1946, p. 138
  • Giuere, M., Initiation à l'oeuvre de Picasso, 1951, no. 64
  • Picasso, An American Tribute, 1962, no. 44
  • Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 196
  • Boggs, Jean S., Picasso & Things, 1992, p. 201
  • Susan Landauer, Elmer Bischoff, the Ethics of Paint, 2001, fig. 21 p. 23
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Additional Artwork by Artist

La Table, Plate II in "Saint Matorel" by Max Jacob Pablo Picasso 1910 (published 1911)
Long-Haired Young Girl Pablo Picasso November 6, 1945
Long-Haired Young Girl Pablo Picasso November 7, 1945

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