Guitare sur un guéridon by Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso
1881-1973 | Spanish

Guitare sur un guéridon
(Guitar on a pedestal)

Gouache on Western wove paper laid on board
Signed “Picasso” (upper left)

Picasso’s prolific career has been marked by many grand love affairs, both romantic, intellectual and creative. Beyond his lovers like Olga Khoklova and Dora Maar and his intellectual muses like Georges Braques and Gertrude Stein, Picasso’s greatest love and inspiration was perhaps a humble instrument: the guitar. Whether it be the Old Guitarist from his early blue period, his groundbreaking series of three-dimensional guitar sculptures from his nascent explorations in Cubism, or his Mandolin and Guitar composition’s grander explorations with color and biomorphic shapes, the guitar is an elusive calling card for modern art’s greatest genius. 

In Guitare sur un guéridon, Picasso intertwines his signature guitar and a bowl of fruit. These two elements are playfully brought together and skillfully anchored on the tabletop by a square positioned at the center of the composition. The result is a captivating and harmonious arrangement that showcases Picasso's artistic ingenuity in blending these everyday objects into a visually striking and cohesive composition. 

This rare gouache was created during the pivotal summer of 1920. During this time, Picasso lived in Juan-les-Pins, a small coastal resort town in the South of France away from the confines of the city and the fallout of World War I. With this newfound freedom, Picasso entered an exciting and innovative creative period and began to interrogate the connections between Neoclassicism and Cubism.

Picasso created a series of gouache paintings characterized by their flat, geometric nature, sinuous contours and strikingly vivid colors. Though not a complete departure from his previous Cubist works, this series showcased the influence of the Surrealists, especially the biomorphic subconscious explorations of Joan Miró, upon Picasso’s oeuvre. While the breadth of his creativity grew, he returned back to a familiar motif — the guitar — with a renewed sense of vigor and excitement. 

Guitare sur un guéridon’s undulating lines and biomorphic appeal bring Picasso's preoccupation with the guitar into deeper focus. The sinuous lines of guitar mirror the sensuous lines of the female form — the other most prevalent subject in Picasso's oeuvre. This beautiful and colorful gouache work illustrates the seminal movement in Picasso's oeuvre from Analytic Cubism toward the evolved sensual, biomorphic style that would characterize Picasso's later works. Similar gouaches from this time can be found in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

Born in 1881 in Málaga, Spain, Picasso spent his childhood studying drawing and painting under his father, Jose Ruíz, who taught at the local art school. Picasso spent a year at the Academy of Arts in Madrid, before traveling to Paris in 1900. Landing in the center of the European art world, Picasso began to mingle in the company of other artists, quickly establishing himself as a critical figure in the thriving Parisian art scene. Critics have often divided Picasso’s artistic output into distinct phases based on his color scheme and style of painting. It was around 1907 that Picasso became very influenced by African masks and art which began making their way into Parisian museums following the expansion of the French Empire into Africa. The faces and simplified, angular planes of the women in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon clearly derive their style from African masks and sculptures, and this painting is often heralded as the beginning of Cubism. Pushing the boundaries of his own creativity throughout his long career, Picasso devoted himself to artistic production. The result was one of the richest and most important oeuvres in art history.

Dated 1920

Paper: 11” high by 8 1/4” wide (27.94 x 20.64 cm)
Frame: 22 5/8" high by 19 5/8" wide by 1 1/2" deep (57.15 x 49.85 cm)

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Exhibitions:

Roslyn Harbor, New York, The Manes Art & Education Center, Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island Collections: May 12-August 4, 2002
Roslyn Harbor, New York, The Manes Art & Education Center, Nassau County Museum of Art, European Art Between World Wars: May 9-August 1, 2004
Roslyn Harbor, New York, The Manes Art & Education Center, Nassau County Museum of Art, Picasso: February 20-April 17, 2005
Roslyn Harbor, New York, The Manes Art & Education Center, Nassau County Museum of Art, Picasso and the School of Paris: Nov. 19, 2006-Feb. 4, 2007
Roslyn Harbor, New York, The Manes Art & Education Center, Nassau County Museum of Art, The Jazz Age: March 23-July 8, 2018
Roslyn Harbor, New York, The Manes Art & Education Center, Nassau County Museum of Art, Selections from the Collection of Dr. Harvey Manes, January 19 - May 12, 2019

Literature:
Pablo Picasso: Supplement aux Annies 1920-1929, Vol. 30, Paris, 1975, by Christian Zervos, p. 30, no. 73

Provenance:
Justin K. Tannhauser, New York
Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland
Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, May 16,1984, lot 134
Sale: Sotheby's New York, November 4, 1993
Private Collection, New York
M.S. Rau, New Orleans