DescriptionAmong Picasso's most poignant images, "The Frugal Repast" marks the beginning of his prodigious career as a printmaker. Executed in 1904 (in only two states), this etching incorporates themes and motifs similar to those in his Blue Period paintings. Although the figures depicted here are united in a tender embrace, their turned heads and distant gazes reveal an emotional separation that contrasts with their physical closeness. Picasso's couple, with their slim, attenuated bodies and telling gestures, embody a universal sense of loneliness and quiet isolation that transcends time and place.

Catalogue RaisonneBloch 1; Geiser/Baer 2.II.b.2