Still life with Compote and Glass

Pablo Picasso Spanish

Not on view

Picasso completed this painting during the first winter of World War I. He counteracted the signs of festive eating and drinking—a compote piled with fruit and cakes, with a black, raffia-encased bottle of rum to its left; a peeled apple; a wineglass—by turning Le Journal black and the adjoining crumpled napkin an ominous leaden gray. The wallpapers he had used in his papiers collés influenced the work’s conception: the faux cutouts with multicolored dots mimic faux-granite wallpapers, and, on the right, the truncated marble panel and wood chair rail can only represent paper imitations of the real thing. The apparent grandeur of the composition is manifestly sham.

Still life with Compote and Glass, Pablo Picasso (Spanish, Malaga 1881–1973 Mougins, France), Oil on canvas

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