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Pablo Picasso

Spanish, 1881-1973

Harlequin (Project for a Monument), 1935

oil on canvas

support: 24 1/4 x 19 3/4 inches (61.59 x 50.16 cm); framed: 33 3/4 x 29 1/4 x 1 inches (85.725 x 74.295 x 2.54 cm)

Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1941

RCA1941:23

More Details

Inscriptions

inscription / upper left / Paris 10 mars XXXV

signature / lower left / Picasso

inscription / back of stretcher, top / Yvonne Zervos

inscription / back of stretcher, center / a Dudensing

Provenance

collection of Christian Zervos, Paris;
Valentine Gallery, New York, by 1940;
sold to the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, December 31, 1941

Class

Paintings

Work Type

Oil painting

Information may change due to ongoing research.Glossary of Terms

During the late 1920s Pablo Picasso became interested in designing imaginary “monuments” in which inventive and surrealistic figures are envisioned as gigantic sculptures. Here he revisits the Harlequin as a lighthearted figure, his cap perched jauntily on his head. Lemon yellow, violet, orange-red, and green and muted tones of blue, rose, and chocolate brown are framed in heavy black lines and set against a background of silvery white. “Cubism,” said Picasso, is “an art dealing primarily with forms, and when a form is realized it is there to live its own life. A mineral substance, having geometric formation, is not made to transitory purposes, it is to remain what it is and will always have its own form.”

Label from Picasso: The Artist and His Models, November 5, 2016–February 19, 2017