Costume design for the ballet Le Tricorne

The Costume design for the ballet Le Tricorne by Pablo Picasso, created in 1920, exemplifies the fruitful intersection of high art and theatrical production during the interwar period. This work is one element from a significant Illustrated Book portfolio documenting the Spanish artist's contributions to the famed Ballets Russes production of Le Tricorne, which premiered in London in 1919.

Classified technically as an Illustrated Book, this sheet utilizes the sophisticated photomechanical process of collotype enhanced by the hand-coloring technique of pochoir. The combination allowed for the creation of high-quality prints suitable for wide publication while retaining the unique vibrancy and immediacy of Picasso's original sketches. This specific image is one of thirty-one within the complete portfolio colored using pochoir, contrasting with a single uncolored collotype.

The original ballet drew heavily on traditional Spanish culture and folklore, themes that profoundly resonated with Picasso, a Spanish native who worked closely with the choreographer Léonide Massine and composer Manuel de Falla. Picasso’s designs for the production marked a temporary stylistic shift away from the Cubist abstraction often associated with him at the time, embracing a powerful, Neo-Classical figurative style tailored specifically for the dynamic demands of the stage. This reversion to classical forms demonstrated the artist's extraordinary versatility and mastery following the disruptions of World War I.

The complete portfolio, documenting one of the most celebrated artistic collaborations of the 1920s, resides in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). This piece serves as essential documentation of a pivotal moment in modernist theater design, providing crucial insight into how Picasso translated his aesthetic sensibilities into three-dimensional costume. Due to the historical importance of the work from the 1920s, high-resolution prints of these designs are often made available through institutional efforts to digitize collections, increasingly accessible to the public domain for scholarly study.