Person seated at a table plucking a dead chicken/Personage assis a une table plumant un oiseau mort

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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)

Date1918

Dimensions5 7/8 x 8 1/4 in. (14.9 x 21.0 cm)

Mediumgouache on paper

ClassificationDrawings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1996.23

Not on View

Label TextIn 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.Published ReferencesZervos, Christian, Pablo Picasso, vol. 29, supplement of the years 1914-1919, Editions Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1975, repr. p. 134, no. 332.

Leal, Brigitte, Musee , vol. I, Reunions des musees nationaux, Paris, 1996.

Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Between the Wars, Sept. 5 2008-Dec.31, 2008.

Toledo Museum of Art, European Expressionist and Cubist Works on Paper: 1900-1930, December 2, 2011-March 11, 2012 (University of Toledo Student Exhibition).

Toledo Museum of Art, The Great War: Art on the Frontline, Jul. 25-Oct. 19, 2014.

Toledo Museum of Art, Werner Pfeiffer Selects, Feb. 13-May 10, 2015.