Guitar

Guitar is a seminal drawing created by Pablo Picasso in 1913, serving as a powerful example of the artist’s commitment to Synthetic Cubism and the technique of papier collé. This complex work is defined by its innovative medium: cut-and-pasted newspaper, patterned wallpaper, various types of paper, ink, chalk, charcoal, and pencil, all applied to colored paper. The combination of drawing implements and found materials elevates the status of the commonplace and challenges traditional boundaries separating drawing, painting, and collage.

Picasso executed this piece during a prolific working period in Céret, spring 1913. The composition uses geometric fragments and overlapping layers to depict the subject of the guitar, an instrument central to the Spanish cultural lexicon that frequently appears in Picasso’s Cubist explorations. The artist utilized the varying textures and printed matter of the wallpaper and newspaper to simultaneously construct and deconstruct the instrument’s physical presence, emphasizing its volume through implied texture rather than conventional shading.

The strategic placement of the elements transforms the two-dimensional surface, making the viewer actively engage with the visual data to reconcile the abstract forms with the recognizable subject matter. The use of commercial patterns and newsprint grounds the abstraction in everyday reality, a key innovation of the Cubist movement. This drawing, classified technically as a mixed-media drawing, demonstrates the moment Picasso and his contemporaries solidified the revolutionary use of collage as a fine art medium. The piece’s enduring historical importance is confirmed by its inclusion in the prestigious collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Prints of this groundbreaking Cubist work remain highly valued resources for studying the development of modern art.