PABLO PICASSO | Oeufs, serviette roulée, courverts

Wildenstein & Co. Inc., New York (acquired by 1925)

Mr. & Mrs. A. Ault, Paris (acquired from the above in 1939)

Edward Bragaline, New York (acquired by 1955)

Paul Rosenberg & Co, New York (acquired by 1966)

Richard Feigen Gallery, New York

Perls Galleries, New York

Galerie Rienzo, New York

Acquired from the above in September 2001

Boston, The Institute of Modern Art, The Sources of Modern Painting: A Loan Exhibition Assembled from American Public and Private Collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1939, no. 12, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Les Oeufs)

New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., Picasso, 1955, no. 7, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Breakfast)

New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., Picasso: An American Tribute (The Twenties), 1962, no. 40, illustrated in the catalogue (titled The Breakfast)

Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Picasso, 1966, no. 29, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Déjeuner)

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1923 à 1925, vol. V, Paris, 1952, no. 266, illustrated pl. 126

Picasso & Things (exhibition catalogue), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia & Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1992, illustrated p. 29

Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso, From the Ballets to Drama (1917-1926), Cologne, 1999, no. 1512, illustrated p. 424 (titled Still Life with Fried Eggs)

Executed with an energetic intensity in pure colors and dramatic outlines, Oeufs, serviette roulée, courverts is an elegant example from a series of still lifes Picasso painted in the decade after World War I. Throughout his long career, Picasso experimented with the still life endlessly, the quotidian subject matter and ease of composition making it a natural vehicle for the artist’s boundless creative instincts. Still life as a genre has preoccupied the imagination of almost every artist in the Western canon, and Picasso’s abundant yet diverse output of still lifes not only solidified his status as the most iconic and inventive artist of the twentieth century, it also redefined the boundaries of still lifes as a category and opened up interpretive possibilities for generations of artists who came after Picasso. Discussing the still lifes of the 1920s, the artist’s biographer John Richardson notes that they “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” (quoted in Picasso, An American Tribute (exhibition catalogue), Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1962, n.p.). In the present work, the viewer’s eye is drawn toward the two eggs, their yolks emphatically rendered with varying shades of yellow, surrounded by whites that have been stylized into a long oval. A baguette dominates the right side of the composition, its volume rendered with strong and crisp lines. Beneath the food items rests a rolled up napkin and casually arranged utensils, the texture of which has been masterfully depicted through Picasso’s use of impasto.

The 1920s was a decade of experimentation for Picasso, during which he reinvented his pre-war Cubist vocabulary while also developing a unique Neoclassical style as part of the larger rappelle à l’ordre taking place among the European avant-garde in response to the horrors of the preceding years. In his neo-Cubist compositions of this decade, Picasso introduced new elements of shading and formal lines to express volume, breaking down perspective even further in a search for the true essence of objects. The exuberance in these works during this highly significant period of his career speaks of a certain personal contentment following the sobriety of the war: “When we think of the still lifes by Picasso in the twenties and early thirties, we usually remember first those that are generous and sometimes even exuberant, presumably an expression of his prosperity, his domestic contentment, his sexual satisfaction, and a general happiness” (J. Sutherland Boggs, ed., Picasso & Things, Cleveland, 1992, p. 199).

In this series of still lifes, Picasso focused on a limited number of objects including fish, guitars, glasses and fruit bowls, evoking the core elements of his Cubist compositions while simultaneously illustrating the influence of Purism, which replaced the multiple depictions of quotidian objects with stability and precision. This prescriptive subject matter enabled Picasso to have the freedom to experiment with formal arrangements, adapting and developing combinations of shapes, while creating depth through tones and textures. Elizabeth Cowling observed of these 1920s still lifes: “In their poise, control, and subtlety, they remind one of Chardin's modest kitchen still lifes, in which a limited repertoire of everyday objects is shuffled and reshuffled to form a series of variations on the same melodic theme " (E. Cowling, Picasso, Style and Meaning, London, 2002, pp. 381-82). The deconstruction of form and the use of planes of color led to an abstraction of everyday objects that directly inspired artists of the Pop Art movement in the 1960s.

Although he rarely spoke about his paintings, Picasso commented on the liberties he took with his still lifes: “It is a misfortune—and probably my delight—to use things as my passions tell me… How awful for a painter who loathes apples to have to use them all the time because they go so well with the cloth! I put all the things I like into my pictures. Things, so much the worse for them; they just have to put up with it” (quoted in C. Zervos, “Conversations avec Picasso” in Cahiers d’Art, Paris, 1935, pp. 173-74).