Picasso's Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) is generally acknowledged to be the greatest draftsman of the twentieth century. The Frick Collection, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., have co-organized an exhibition for 2011–12 that will look at the dazzling development of Picasso's drawings, from the precocious academic exercises of his youth in the 1890s to the virtuoso classical works of the early 1920s. Through a selection of more than fifty works at each venue, the presentation will examine the artist's stylistic experiments and techniques in this roughly thirty-year period, which begins and ends in a classical mode and encompasses the radical innovations of cubism and collage. 

The show will demonstrate how drawing served as an essential means of invention and discovery in Picasso's multifaceted art, while its centrality in his vast oeuvre connects him deeply with the grand tradition of European masters. Indeed, the exhibition will bring to the fore his complex engagement with artists of the near and distant past and will explore the diverse ways he competed with the virtuoso techniques of his predecessors and perpetuated them in revitalized form. 

The flatness of form, mixed media, and spontaneity of execution of this drawing show Picasso responding to new currents in the graphic arts and the thriving Catalan movement of Modernisme. One of a large cycle of drawings of Barcelona's bohemian community, this work was shown in 1900 at the local tavern Els Quatre Gats, marking Picasso's public debut as an artist.

Here Picasso envisions the demise of the commedia dell'arte character Harlequin, identified by the diamond pattern of his costume. He lies with his hands in prayer, attended by mourners, recalling Renaissance depictions of Christ's entombment as well as the sculpted effigies of medieval sarcophagi. For the dog, the brown cardboard support suffices as the color of his hide..

  

Musical instruments, particularly the violin and guitar, appeared frequently in Picasso's work at this time in various media. In this virtuoso tonal drawing, fragmented lines and planes appear to be suspended in a shallow relief-like space.

Cutout pieces of commercially produced wallpaper and blank colored drawing paper represent different parts of the foreground and background of this still life, working with and against the elements that are drawn by hand.

This gouache forms part of a series of some thirty drawings based on the hotel room Picasso and his new wife, Olga Khokhlova, stayed in during their summer on the French Riviera.