Notebook No. 26 (Study of Violins and Musical Instruments)
Pablo Picasso Spanish
Not on view
Picasso once wrote "je suis le cahier" (I am the notebook), indicating the vital role that his sketchbooks, as sites of experimentation, played in his formation as an artist. This pocket-sized example dates to his Cubist period, when he dismantled conventional perspective and fragmented everyday objects into reductive forms. Its pages contain sketches of various objects, including guitars and violins. Such musical instruments were important for the artist as he developed the visual syntax of Cubism. Incorporating both voids and projections, they provided the optimal subjects for exploring depth, perspective, and the translation of three-dimensional forms into two-dimensional planes. Notebook no. 26, one of 175 that the artist filled throughout his career, affords a window onto Picasso’s invention of Cubism and his treatment of musical instruments and related forms as subjects for exploration, including the drawings shown here from the same period.
This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
