Verre et compotier, painted in 1922, is executed with energetic intensity in pure colors and dramatic rhythmic lines. The 1920s saw Picasso returning to his pre-war Cubist experiments and introducing new elements of shading and formal lines to express volume. The exuberance in these works 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” (Jean Sutherland Boggs, ed., Picasso & Things, Cleveland, 1992, p. 199). Indeed, it was in this year that Picasso notoriously purchased an expensive car and employed a personal chauffeur; Gilot recalls how the artist had always refused to learn how to drive lest it spoil the suppleness of his hands and wrists (Françoise Gilot, Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art, London, 1990, p. 223).

In this context of personal satisfaction and prosperity, Picasso produced a series of animated still lifes of which the present work is one elegant example. He focused on a limited number of objects in these works, including fish, guitars, glasses and fruit bowls. 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" (Elizabeth 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 (see fig. 1).