Violin and Grapes

1912

Not on view

Returned to lender

This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.

The fluctuating planes in a shallow space are characteristic of Analytic Cubism and the modernist emphasis on the picture surface. Nevertheless, Picasso’s violin on a wall also harkens back to trompe l’oeil board paintings, which reversed the conventions of Renaissance perspective and refused to lead the eye into a fictive middle ground or distance. The artist mixed ham-handed and virtuosic renditions of the violin, having learned from Braque artisanal techniques for faking wood with a brush and a decorator’s comb. Not by chance, Picasso included a bunch of grapes (they spill out of a wicker basket)—the symbol of deceptive illusionism since antiquity and the fruit that the Cubists drew and painted more often than any other from 1912 onward.

Artwork Details

Overview

Exhibition History

Title: Violin and Grapes
Artist: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, Malaga 1881–1973 Mougins, France)
Date: 1912
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mrs. David M. Levy Bequest, 1960
Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art