©Pablo Picasso - On the Beach 1937
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
On the Beach 1937
129x194cm oil, conté crayon, and chalk on canvas
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
<< Previous G a l l e r y Next >>
From Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum:
During the early months of 1937 Pablo Picasso was responding powerfully to the Spanish Civil War with the preparatory drawings for Guernica and with etchings such as The Dream and Lie of Franco, an example of which is in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. However, in this period he also executed a group of works that do not betray this preoccupation with political events. The subject of On the Beach, also known as Girls with a Toy Boat, specifically recalls Picasso’s Three Bathers of 1920. Painted at Le Tremblay-sur-Mauldre near Versailles, On the Beach is one of several paintings in which he returns to the ossified, volumetric forms in beach environments that appeared in his works of the late 1920s and early 1930s. On the Beach can be compared with Henri Matisse’s Le Luxe, II, ca. 1907–08, in its simplified, planar style and in the poses of the foreground figures. It is plausible that the arcadian themes of his friendly rival Matisse would appeal to Picasso as an alternative to the violent images of war he was conceiving at the time.
Lucy Flint