Bearded Man Playing Guitar

Pablo Picasso

Avignon, summer 1914 · Graphite, watercolor, and gouache on tan wove paper; subsequently mounted to paperboard · Modern and Contemporary Art

At the onset of World War I, Picasso went to Avignon where he encountered an old friend, the Basque artist Francisco Iturrino, with whom he had shared his first exhibition in 1901. The sheet, while presenting a cubist studies of a guitar player, shares expressive features with Iturrino, adding an element of realism in this abstracted form. The orange-hued instrument at the center of the composition could be read as a painter’s palette, owing to its curvilinear shape. Picasso may have intended this productive ambiguity as a sly reference his friend’s profession.

Artist

Pablo Picasso

Date

Avignon, summer 1914

Medium

Graphite, watercolor, and gouache on tan wove paper; subsequently mounted to paperboard

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, Gift of Leonard A. Lauder, 2016