The Guitar

Henri Laurens French

Not on view

Musical references permeate Cubist painting and sculpture. The guitar, depicted often by Pablo Picasso, is one of the most recognizable Cubist motifs. Like a Cubist painting, Laurens’s sculpture blurs, even inverts, the relationship between solids and voids; solids appear to recede, while voids assume physical presence. This effect is particularly apparent in the face of the guitar, which has given way to a segment of the instrument’s sound hole, over which Laurens has depicted strings.

The Guitar, Henri Laurens (French, 1885–1954), Painted terracotta

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