Picasso Harlequin 1917-1937

More than 180 works including oil paintings, works on paper and sculptures offer a remarkable picture of the original and eclectic creative frenzy of Pablo Picasso, in the twenty years between the two world wars: 1917-1937, which encompasses so to speak all the time production of the master Spanish, since it emphasizes the diversity protean artist. The title Harlequin art wants to be a metaphor, as pointed out by Yve-Alain Bois: “Harlequin can be anything you want, and Picasso, who was at the peak of his productivity at the same time and could adopt the style of Cubism, Neoclassicism, Surrealism and expressionism, had different affinities with this mask legendary “. The book presents in fact four different interpretations that Picasso gives to this subject: the classic Harlequin (Portrait of Leonice Massine) 1917 (Museu Picasso, Barcelona), the beautiful cubist Harlequin player of 1924 (The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) The Harlequin abstractionist of 1927 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and the Head of Harlequin surrealist always 1927 (private collection).

For Picasso, Rome is the moment when, after the crisis of Cubism, the artist chooses to recover the classical tradition, deciding that nothing is discarded and everything can become a part of his artistic arsenal as evidenced L’Italienne, cheerful breakdown Cubist an Italian girl with the profile of the dome of St. Peter’s in the background, that Picasso painted during his stay in Rome. In 1925, Picasso, tired of only two alternate styles, Cubism and Neoclassicism, and came to surrealism and, without ever bind to the movement, however, overcame the surrealists in realizing their artistic program, for he knew better than most of them how to avoid the trap of creating an image to illustrate a theory.