Le compotier (Fruit Bowl)

Apollinaire once compared the process breaking motifs down in Analytical Cubism to the way a surgeon dissects a cadaver. In Pablo Picasso’s output, the starting point for the movement’s formal evolution into organic constitution and logical focus is the paintings he did in summer 1909 in Horta de Ebro, where he returned ten years after his first visit when he was young. The iconography of the period revolves mainly around the themes of still life and the study of the human figure, executed using this new pictorial writing.
Of these two major themes in Picasso’s Cubism, Le compotier (Fruit Bowl) fits into the theme of still life. This work, one of the few Cubist works painted by Picasso in Spain in summer 1910, is part of Analytical Cubism period, which the artist developed between 1910 and 1912. As with most of the works by Picasso and Braque at that time, the cerebral nature of Le compotier has a correspondent chromatic sobriety in the execution of the motif.

Paloma Esteban Leal