Head: Study for a Monument
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.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.
Artwork Details
- Title: Head: Study for a Monument
- Artist: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, Malaga 1881–1973 Mougins, France)
- Date: 1929
- Geography: Country of Origin France
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 28 3/4 × 23 1/2 in. (73 × 59.7 cm)
Framed: 39 3/4 × 34 3/4 in. (101 × 88.3 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Trustee Corporation Fund (BMA 1966.41)
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph courtesy Baltimore Museum of Art
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art