Picasso’s contact with the circus world was very frequent throughout his career. In Barcelona at the turn of the 19th century, Picasso was to see circuses passing through the town, although there remains no trace of his work from that time. Later, the travelling circuses on the Paris boulevards were to become a place where the young Picasso and his friends would meet up when they first came to stay in the city. It was at the end of 1904 and in 1905 that the circus – Medrano being a point of reference in his life and work – became the central topic of his compositions of the time. The artist created a fictitious scene where acrobats and tight-rope walkers – who already appeared in the literary and pictorial tradition of Romanticism to symbolize loneliness and human suffering – play out the roles of everyday life, their personal problems, their loneliness and the incomprehension with which their feelings were met. The family scenes, where travelling acrobats and harlequins become the true protagonists of this period, are the heritage of the family groups which have their roots in the blue period. These compositions were to be at the origin of a large painting which Picasso had dwelt on for a long time, The Family of Travelling Acrobats, produced in 1905. As Minotaure was to become in the 1930s, so Harlequin now became the artist’s alter ego. This character, who refers back to the marginal characters of the blue period, was to become the true hero of what was called the pink period.
During the years of Cubism, the Harlequin family reappeared here and there in a number of oils done in 1909. In the background can be seen the still life Loaves and fruit dish with fruits on a table. The layout of the elements of this canvass is reminiscent of a previous composition, Carnival in the bar, the characters of which are metamorphosed to produce the various elements composing the still life in question. In 1915, Picasso conducted a series of experiments in which he continued his analysis of the representation of Harlequin. It resulted in the Harlequin painting owned by the New York Museum of Modern Art, accompanied by a whole series of watercolours and which, according to the artist himself, constitutes the apex of his interpretation of Harlequin. This kind of intensive exercise was to be repeated two years later with Parade, his first and very daring theatrical collaboration. The re-creation of the life of a fairground stall was to provide a pretext for a series of plastic experiments. In this way, his Cubist achievements were to alternate with a naturalism which served as precursor to the monumental classicism that he was to develop over the following years and in which the character of Harlequin was to continue to occupy centre stage.
From 1920, the topic of Pierrot and Harlequin returned in force and, by establishing the link with the characters of 1917, one sees the two large decisive versions of The Three musicians appear – in which the artist again represents himself as a Harlequin – and which constitute a splendid outcome of the influences of his travels in Italy.
The five magnificent monumental portraits of the painter Jacint Salvadó, always represented as Harlequin and produced in 1923, offer yet further proof of Picasso’s interest in the Commedia dell' Arte and of the mark it made on him.
In the 1930s, the personality of Minotaure, with which the artist identified himself to the point of even making it his alter ego, gradually replaced that of Harlequin only to end up by embodying his remains in a symbolic drawing: The Remains of Minotaure in Harlequin’s costume.
The marks of the circus world remained present throughout his life. In his last works, the circus spectacle took on a particular importance and the artist exorcised the circus numbers of his youth. The horsewomen and clowns re-appear in a rich and varied exercise in which his work defies the inexorably fleeting nature of life. Picasso does not hesitate to let himself be photographed on many occasions portrayed as a clown, the symbol of his both sad and heroic personality. His photographer friends, David Douglas Duncan, André Villiers and Edward Quinn, have left us splendid evidence of that.
The catalogue reproduces all the exposed works in colour.
Catalogue selling price CHF 45. - - (approx. € 30.-).
