Explore the Background of this artwork.
This painting was produced during a period in Picasso's art known as Analytical Cubism. Cubism was developed between 1907 and 1914 by Picasso and Georges Braque after they met in 1907. It was an innovative new style of art, which in its early stages involved breaking surfaces into sharply defined planes. In 1911, Picasso and Georges Braque spent the summer at Céret, in the French Pyrenees, a period that is considered to be an important moment in the development of Cubism.The onset of cubism can be viewed as a rejection of traditional painting techniques and realistic imitations of the natural world. Traditional techniques, like modelling and perspective, were replaced by fractured objects reduced to geometric shapes and shallow space. The subject could also be depicted from multiple viewpoints.Until 1910, the subject of cubist artworks could still be interpreted, as the figure or object in the paintings was conveyed in a fractured form, but reassembled to a certain extent to offer a distinguishable representation of the subject. However, from 1910 to 1912, Picasso and Braque abstracted their works even further, by reducing the subject to just a series of overlapping planes that were more complex and difficult to comprehend. The paintings of this period were also dominated by near monochromatic hues of brown, grey and black.
Georges Braque Cubism Analytical Cubism Céret