Pablo Picasso

Galeria Leandro Navarro, Madrid
Galerie Beres, Paris
Galerie Brame & Lorenceau, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Analysing Cubism, 2013, n.n.

Anisabelle Beres & Michel Arveiller, Au Temps des Cubistes 1910-1920, Paris, 2006, no. 189, illustrated p. 462-63

Executed on cream-colored laid paper. The verso of the sheet is not accessible as it is attached to the supporting mat around the perimeter. The medium is strong and well-preserved. There is some minor time staining along the top edge and a further stain in the top right corner. This work is in overall very good condition.
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Homme au chapeau melon is a testament to Picasso’s extraordinary draughtsmanship and pushes the boundaries of Picasso’s Cubist concerns. Executed circa 1916, it drives his Cubist motifs even further with its intersecting planes and effervescent shading that creates a visually stimulating “push-pull” between flatness and perceived depth.

The year 1915, in which the effects of the war were strongly resonating across Europe, was also a particularly trying one for Picasso. His lover of four years whom he had met through Louis Marcoussis, Eva Gouel, was dying of tuberculosis in a suburban Paris hospital. In a typical Picasso tour-de-force, he was already seeing another lover, Gaby Depeyre Lespinasse, who would then become the object of his desire. It is in such period of emotive turmoil, introspection and creative frenzy that Picasso was also at his most inventive. Pierre Daix noted, “Picasso’s painting had become baroque. He was experiencing an evident pleasure in painting, in exploring every available decorative possibility, urged on by perhaps those whose Cubism he had inspired, like Juan Gris or Severini—but Eva was once again the queen of this flowering, which, with a sequence of still lifes dedicated to Ma Jolie and an explosion of color, combines the most intense lyricism and humor. This will later be called Rococo Cubism, a particularly ill-chosen term. It is, in fact, amorous Cubism” (Pierre Daix, Picasso, Life and Art, Paris, 1987, p. 137).

The costuming of the figure hints to the character of the musketeer that would become a prevalent theme in Picasso’s work at the end of the 1960s. Here, however, the bowler hat is used as a form of negative space that visually echoes and balances the roundness of the man’s hands and sleeves and is in distinct contrast to the shading that frames the figure’s face and to the taught lines of his torso, table, and surroundings. Our own understanding of space and its figurative representation is visually and conceptually challenged. It is the communication between still life, figure and its context which make this work so incredibly fascinating, creating a visual dialogue of contrasting planes in which all elements are in conversation and appear to be in a state of continuous change and movement. As Picasso once stated, “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality. There’s no danger then, anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark. It is what started the artist off, excited his ideas, and stirred up his emotions. Ideas and emotions will in the end be prisoners in his work. Whatever they do, they can’t escape from the picture. They form an integral part of it, even when their presence is no longer discernible” (quoted in Christian Zervos, “Conversation avec Picasso” in Cahiers d’Art, Paris, 1935, p. 176).