Instruments de musique sur une table (Musical Instruments on a Table)

From the end of the First World War, Pablo Picasso worked on different styles and expressive forms by turns in his work. Although he would not relinquish Cubism altogether, he did progressively simplify and schematise, arriving at the essential. During the summers in the period stretching from 1919 to 1925, the artist approached the still-life theme on a table in front of an open window, and across this time span he would replace the angled outlines of Cubism with curvilinear contours and organic forms, drawing inspiration from the contemporary painting of Surrealist painters such as Joan Miró and André Masson.
In Instruments de musique sur une table (Musical Instruments on a Table), Picasso reaches an extreme synthesis — the room space is confused with the table surface, of which there is only mention via the black shadow that is cast and the contours of the table legs. In the background a white rectangle simulates a window, and on the right, another seems to indicate a door. The three elements on the table — guitar, mandolin, fruit — appear to be floating on its surface. The sole trace of reality is the profile of a woman, almost imperceptibly painted in white on the mandolin, as if she were playing it.

Raúl Martínez Arranz