Person seated at a table plucking a dead chicken/Personage assis a une table plumant un oiseau mort
Artist: Pablo Picasso (Spanish (active France), 1881-1973)
Date: 1918
Dimensions:
5 7/8 x 8 1/4 in. (14.9 x 21.0 cm)
Medium: gouache on paper
Classification: Drawings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number: 1996.23
Label Text:In this watercolor, Pablo Picasso depicted a man, seated at a table, cutting the neck of a chicken from which blood spurts. The image is poised, disquietingly, between playful humor - the bright colors, lively dot and dash patterns, jaunty side-to-side movement of planes, paw-like hand - and sinister intimations of sacrifice and mortality. For Picasso, it was a time of loneliness, darkness, and grief: the death of his lover, the escalating carnage of the War, and the dire news of his friends Georges Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Blaise Cendrars grievously wounded in battle.
World War I was a time of loneliness and sadness for Picasso. His close friends Georges Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Blaise Cendrars were injured during the fighting, and his lover Éva Gouel had died. In this watercolor, his emotions at the time are evoked in the sharp- edged style of Cubism. Picasso depicts a man sitting at a table cutting the throat of a chicken from which blood spurts. He represents the forms fragmented in a series of overlapping planar shapes, each defined by clear colors and decorative patterns.
World War I was a time of loneliness and sadness for Picasso. His close friends Georges Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Blaise Cendrars were injured during the fighting, and his lover Éva Gouel had died. In this watercolor, his emotions at the time are evoked in the sharp- edged style of Cubism. Picasso depicts a man sitting at a table cutting the throat of a chicken from which blood spurts. He represents the forms fragmented in a series of overlapping planar shapes, each defined by clear colors and decorative patterns.
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