Pablo Picasso

Estate of the artist (inv. 3243)

Marina Picasso (the artist's granddaughter; by descent from the above)

Acquired from the above by the late owner

Paris, Grand-Palais, Hommage à Pablo Picasso, 1966-67, no. 78, illustrated in the catalogue

Venice, Centro di Cultura di Palazzo Grassi, Picasso, Opere dal 1895 al 1971 dalla Collezione Marina Picasso, 1981, no. 177, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Munich, Haus der Kunst; Cologne, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle; Frankfurt, Städtische Galerie im Städelschen Kunstinstitut & Zurich, Kunsthaus, Pablo Picasso, Sammlung Marina Picasso, 1981-82, no. 142, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Tokyo, The National Museum of Modern Art & Kyoto, Municipal Museum, Picasso, Masterpieces from Marina Picasso Collection and Museums in U.S.A. and U.S.S.R., 1983, no. 113, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., The Primacy of Design: Major Drawings in Black and Colored Media from the Marina Picasso Collection, 1983, no. 38, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria & Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Picasso, 1984, no. 87, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Geneva, Galerie Jan Krugier, Picasso, œuvres cubistes de la Collection Marina Picasso, 1986, no. 187, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Barcelona & Madrid, Fundacio Caixa de Barcelona, Picasso cubista 1907-1920, 1987, no. 24

New York, Jan Krugier Gallery, Picasso: Cubist Works from the Marina Picasso Collection, 1987, no. 48, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Tokyo, Tokyo Station Gallery, Pablo Picasso: Focused on Cubist Works from the Marina Picasso Collection, 1988, no. 39

Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz,  Linie, Licht und Schatten. Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 1999, no. 133, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, The Timeless Eye. Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection,1999, no. 147, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Miradas sin Tiempo. Dibujos, Pinturas y Esculturas de la Coleccion Jan y Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2000, no. 179, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Bern, Kunstmuseum, Picasso und die Schweiz, 2001-02, no. 93, illustrated in the catalogue

Vienna, Albertina, Goya bis Picasso. Meisterwerke der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2005, no. 140, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Munich, Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Das Ewige Auge - Von Rembrandt bis Picasso. Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2007, no. 182, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Christian Zervos, Picasso, œuvres 1920-1926, Paris, 1926, illustrated n.p.

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, œuvres de 1926 à 1932, Paris, 1955, vol. 7,  no. 19, illustrated pl. 9

Werner Spies, Pablo Picasso. Das plastische Werk, Berlin & Düsseldorf, 1984, no. 64A, illustrated p. 330

The Picasso Project (ed.), Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. Toward Surrealism, 1925-1929, San Francisco, 1996, no. 26-047, illustrated p. 56

Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso. From the Ballets to Drama (1917-1926), Barcelona, 1999, no. 1642, illustrated in colour p. 463

Werner Spies, Picasso. The Sculptures, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2000, no. 64A, illustrated p. 350

Brigitte Léal, Christine Piot & Marie-Laure Bernadac, The Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2000, no. 563, illustrated in colour p. 236

John Richardson, A Life of Picasso. The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, New York, 2007, illustrated in colour n.p.

Executed on buff coloured laid paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount in the top two corners, floating in the mount. There is a small paper loss to the white paper in the left hand side of the composition, and a couple of very small tears towards the centre of the left edge. Apart from a vertical crease at the centre of the upper edge, and undulations in the paper caused by folds which are intrinsic to the artist's working process, this work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although slightly stronger in the original.
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Most readily associated with Picasso's works from his Analytical and Synthetic Cubist periods, such as his ground-breaking series of collages (fig. 1), the image of the guitar made its appearance once again in an extraordinary group of collages on cardboard executed in the spring of 1926 (figs. 3 & 4), including the present work. Using discarded everyday objects and materials such as tulle, rag, dishcloth, shirt, buttons and nails, in this series of collages Picasso essentially embraced the Dada idiom of subverting high art by incorporating such seemingly insignificant objects and materials into his compositions. ‘What I am doing now is the destruction of modern painting’, Picasso would later say to Roland Penrose. ‘We have already destroyed the old masters. We must now destroy the modern ones’ (quoted in J. Richardson, op. cit., p. 308).

Bridging the gap between two-dimensional and three-dimensional art, these works are at once paintings and sculptures, while radically modifying the accepted definition of each medium. Collage avec feuille, ficelle et tulle (Guitare)and its companion pieces - most of which Picasso kept in his possession until the end of his life, and many subsequently entering the collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris - are a powerful testament to the artist's endlessly innovative spirit and his constant need to reinvent his own style and subject matter.

 

Writing about this group of collages including the present work, Josep Palau i Fabre commented: 'During the spring of 1926, Picasso furiously attacked the theme of the guitar, as if all the versions he had so far given us were not enough, as if he still had to extract unprecedented notes from the instrument. And he did. But what notes! They are hair-raising. This is not a return to the guitars of Cubism in order to renounce or contradict those he had been conceiving recently; it goes much further beyond. The guitar he now offers us is incapable of producing pleasant, harmonious music; it represents the destruction of all the preceding guitars. This constitutes revolution within revolution' (J. Palau i Fabre, op. cit., p. 462).

 

Christine Piot wrote: ‘After the large Guitar in painted metal of 1924 [fig. 2], Picasso made relief-paintings using the same motif. This work outside the realm of painting would bring him closer to the Surrealists, who, with Breton, appreciated the fact that the painter or sculptor was not prejudiced by the medium but sought “the perishable and the ephemeral.” […] With this ludicrous piece of makeshift construction, which combines tulle, braids, and buttons with the most modest materials (rag, dishcloth, string, cord, nails), Picasso took pleasure in violating the laws of painting. As Aragon would write in 1930, in “La Peinture au Défi”: “It happened that Picasso did a very serious thing. He took a dirty shirt and attached it to a canvas with a needle and thread.” Thus Picasso introduced raw reality into art in sometimes disturbing, if not hostile, forms’ (C. Piot in B. Léal, C. Piot & M.-L. Bernadac, op. cit., p. 232).