Portrait of Josep Cardona
Pablo PICASSO
(Spanish, 1881-1973 (active France))
Portrait of Josep Cardona
Date1899
Mediumconté crayon on paper
Dimensionsoverall (sight): 14 3/4 x 11 3/8 in. (37.5 x 28.9 cm)
frame: 29 1/2 × 25 1/2 × 1 1/2 in. (74.9 × 64.8 × 3.8 cm)
ClassificationDRAWINGS
Credit LineSBMA, Bequest of Margaret Mallory to the Ala Story Collection
Object number1998.50.77
Subject(s)
- portraits
Collection
- 20th century European
On View
Not on viewLabel Text This is one of several portraits of the sculptor Josép Cardona (1878-1923) made by the teenaged Picasso. The two were part of a group of avant-garde artists affiliated with El Quatre Gats, a bar-restaurant that also served as a bohemian hang-out and as an alternative space for art exhibitions. In fact, this energetic drawing may have been included in Picasso’s very first exhibition held at Els Quatre Gats in 1900. Picasso’s alliance with Cardona is signaled not only through the inscription’s declaration of friendship but also through his use of Catalan, which he’d learned recently, to signal his identification with the group’s defiant separatism from mainstream Spanish culture.
Picasso produced an enormous body of work, especially works on paper, during this formative early period, most of which he donated to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. He would soon discard ‘Ruiz’ from his last name – a gesture of liberation from his academic artist-father’s influence.