Pablo Picasso

Geneva, Galerie Krugier et Cie., Picasso: œuvres cubistes de la collection Marina Picasso, 1986, no. 185
Japan, Yomiuri Shimbun Sha Association of Art Museums, Exposition Pablo Picasso, collection Marina Picasso, 1986-87

Compotier, bouteille et verre is one of a number of interior still-lifes that Picasso painted in the early 1920s, whose style developed out of the artist’s pre-war Cubist experiments. With the sobriety of the war years behind him, Picasso began to combine pure colour with powerful linear black shading to express volume and space. In 1938 Gertrude Stein wrote: 'during this period his pictures were very brilliant in color …the cubic forms were continually being replaced by surfaces and lines, the lines were more important than anything else, they lived by and in themselves, he painted his pictures not by means of his objects, but by the lines’ (G. Stein, Picasso, London, 1938, pp. 27-8).

In the present work, Picasso cunningly combines both natural and Cubist elements, abandoning the decorative approach for a busy linearity and angularity of forms. Although the jug, bottle and glass have been reduced to plain geometric forms, the composition is enlivened by colourful patterns and thick horizontal and vertical lines resulting in a complex construction of flat, interlocking planes.

Discussing this final phase of Picasso’s Cubism, John Richardson notes that these still-lifes ‘are astonishingly varied in their dazzling colors, elaborate patterning, rich textures and complex compositions. No longer did Picasso feel obliged to investigate the intricate formal and spatial problems that had preoccupied him ten years before. Instead he felt free to relax and exploit his cubist discoveries in a decorative manner that delights the eye (J. Richardson, Picasso, An American Tribute (exhibition catalogue), New York, 1962).