Three musicians
| Three musicians (Musiciens aux masques) |
|---|
| Pablo Picasso , 1921 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 200.7 x 222.9 cm |
| Museum of Modern Art, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund, New York
Link to the picture |
Three musicians (Musiciens aux masques) is the title of two oil paintings by the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso from 1921, created in Fontainebleau near Paris that summer . Both reflect the style of synthetic cubism , although they originated at a time when Picasso was already painting in the neoclassical style. The text describes the later version. It measures 200.7 × 222.9 cm and is under the title Three Musicians in the holdings of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York , the earlier version can be viewed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art . The main difference between the two versions is the positioning of the middle and left figures.
description
The painting, which is over two meters wide, shows three roughly life-size musicians in a room, standing as if on a stage. In front of them is a table with an unrecognizable object on it, and under the table on the left - barely noticeable - is a large black dog. The musicians wear costumes: on the left a Pierrot plays the clarinet, in the middle a harlequin guitar, and on the right a monk sings from a sheet of music that he holds in both hands. In contrast to the spatial perspective, all musicians are depicted flat, without any depth. The table is shown from above, its side edges are not parallel, but rather diverge. The non-representational figures, broken down into geometric shapes, have sharp outlines and are in black, off-white, blue, red and yellow; the walls and the floor are painted in different shades of brown.
History and interpretation
| Seated Pierrot |
|---|
| Pablo Picasso , 1918 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 92.7 x 73 cm |
| Museum of Modern Art, Sam A. Lewisohn Bequest, New York
Link to the picture |
The musicians and the dog cite motifs from a bygone period - which went down in art history as the Pink Period - from Picasso's life at the beginning of the 20th century, when he was fond of bohemian and circus life, and this in his works, such as in 1905 in Die Gaukler , depicted. Pierrot and Harlequin are essential characters from the old Italian folk comedy, the Commedia dell'arte . Before the painting Three Musicians , Picasso created the thematically similar work Seated Pierrot (1918) after a trip to Italy in 1917 , but in a classic style. It is also in the holdings of the Museum of Modern Art
Picasso presumably depicted himself in this painting with the figure in the middle, disguised as a harlequin, flanked by two figures who could represent his poet friends, the late Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob , who had retired to a monastery. The two-dimensional fragments of the figures come from cut-out and painted pieces of paper ( paper collé ), an early form of collage that was typical of synthetic cubism. The French painter Paul Cézanne had already painted his son Jan with friend Louis Guillaume as Pierrot and Harlequin in 1888. Picasso quoted Cézanne's influence on him with the familiar words: “Cézanne! Cézanne was the father of all of us ”.
Another assumption that connects specific people with the musicians relates to three composers with whom Picasso worked for the theater. They are Erik Satie , Manuel de Falla and Igor Stravinsky . In 1920 Picasso had made sets and costumes for the ballet Pulcinella by Igor Stravinsky. In contrast to the Ballet Parade from 1917, the client Sergei Diaghilew asked for an abstract decoration. There are also interpretations that the painting was a kind of "mourning work" for Picasso, since he had to give up his bohemian life after he married Olga Chochlowa in 1918.
Picasso's painting Three Women at the Fountain , which is in the neoclassical style, was also created in the summer of 1921 .
Provenance
The art dealer Paul Rosenberg bought the picture directly from Picasso for his private collection in autumn 1921. In 1949 it became the property of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, with the help of the Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund.
literature
- Siegfried Gohr : Pablo Picasso. Life and work. I do not search, I find. DuMont Literature and Art Verlag, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-8321-7743-4
Web links
- Information The Museum of Modern Art (English)
- Information The Philadelphia Museum of Art (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ See web link Philadelphia Museum of Art
- ↑ Siegfried Gohr: I'm not looking, I find , p. 84 f
- ↑ Quoted from the Weblink Museum of Modern Art
- ^ Bernard Grom: People and world images of modern painting p. 173.Beckmann Verlag, accessed on September 5, 2010 .
- ↑ Siegfried Gohr: I'm not looking, I find , p. 90 f
- ↑ Quoted from the Weblink Museum of Modern Art
