Pablo Picasso

Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris

Galerie de l'Effort Moderne (Léonce Rosenberg), Paris

Private Collection, Europe

Private Collection, Arizona (sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 18, 1990, lot 346)

Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery, New York (acquired at the above sale)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1912 à 1917, vol. 2**, Paris, 1942, no. 473, illustrated pl. 220 (catalogued as oil on canvas)

Pierre Daix & Joan Rosselet, Picasso, The Cubist Years 1907-1916, London, 1979, no. 715, illustrated p. 220

Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso Cubism (1907-1917), New York, 1990, no. 1147, illutrated p. 390

Oil on wooden panel that has been glued down to board. There are some small, barely visible skips in the paint in the central white area, which are the natural results of the textured surface of the wooden support. Under ultra-violet light, there are some tiny specks of retouching in the upper-left of the composition. Over all, this work is in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Of all the manifestations of Picasso's art throughout his long career, his Cubist compositions are arguably his most inventive and original.  Picasso, along with Georges Braque, pioneered this artistic movement and introduced the avant-garde to new levels of pictorial abstraction. Still-lifes were usually the favored subjects of these depictions, and never before had this age-old theme been interpreted with such a radical approach.   Picasso experimented with the deconstruction and reconstruction of form and the manipulation of space in these compositions, exposing the physical properties of the objects he was depicting.  Bouteille de Bass et verre, executed in 1914, is a wonderful rendition of this theme.  In this picture, Picasso presents the objects on the table as they would appear from several different vantage points, providing a spectacle that would not otherwise be possible in a two-dimensional representation.   

Over the course of the 1910s, Picasso's Cubism developed from fractured, highly abstract "analytical" depictions of form to more legible "synthetic" compositions that sometimes incorporated text and elements of collage.  Bouteille de Bass et verre exemplifies the tenets of this later phase of Cubism, with its legible representation of the elongated bottle and the newspaper.  Picasso's colleague, Juan Gris, once gave the following explanation: "I work with elements of the intellect, with the imagination.  I try to make concrete that which is abstract, I proceed from the general to the particular....Cézanne turns a bottle into a cylinder...I make a bottle – a particular bottle – out of a cylinder" (quoted in Jean Sutherland Boggs, Picasso and Things (ex. cat.), The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Philadephia Museum of Art & Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1992, p. 132).