Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973

Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper

Georgia Museum of Art,

The University of Georgia: gift of Alfred H. Holbrook

GMOA 46.115

A modern composition, The Guitar was executed by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso during his synthetic cubist phase. Dated by his cataloguer, Christian Zervos, to the winter of 1912-1913, the watercolor joins several other works from this phase where Picasso emphasizes abstraction through flat patterns and interlocking shapes. Ostensibly, the title refers to what one sees in the picture--the suggestion of a guitar--but the artist goes further and implies a Afourth dimension@ of sound, movement, and time through a cacophonous juxtaposition and repetition of forms where angular and curved shapes overlap and intersect, creating tension and rhythm and a sense of vibrancy. Picasso=s interest in capturing multi-dimensional aspects of an object sprang from years immediately prior when he and fellow Parisian Georges Braque experimented with capturing many different angles of an object or person in one work. Their cubist still lifes and portraits influenced profoundly the art of many of their contemporaries and changed fundamentally the thought-making processes of later artists.

Patricia Phagan, Curator of Prints and Drawings

Georgia Museum of Art