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Head: Study for a Monument
Pablo Picasso Spanish
Not on view
When the writer Guillaume Apollinaire died in 1918, Picasso was commissioned to create a sculpted monument for his friend’s grave. More than a decade later, he was still searching for the form the memorial should take. This work is one among many sketches and paintings he created for the commission. Inspired, perhaps, by one of Apollinaire’s essays about a monument for a dead poet consisting of nothing but poetry and fame, Picasso here uses the aesthetic of the unfinished to represent poetry as an inspirational act related to the process of creation. Fame is expressed in the monumental scale of the tectonically arranged conical shapes.
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