Pablo Picasso
Head: Study for a Monument
1928
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Pablo Picasso
Head: Study for a Monument
1928
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 x 23 1/2 in. (73 x 59.7 cm.)
Credit Line
The Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Trustee Corporation Fund
Object Number
1966.41
Picasso’s friend, the poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire, died of influenza in 1918. Head: Study for a Monument is part of Picasso’s effort to fulfill a commission for a monument to be placed at his friend’s gravesite. Unfortunately, Picasso’s proposals for this commission were not accepted. Later, however, he completed a more conventional monument for Apollinaire in a park in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris. Head: Study for a Monument is related to Picasso’s paintings of abstracted female figures set against a blue sky, as well as to numerous drawings contained in two notebooks from 1927 and 1928. These drawings include female figures at the beach and bone-like forms and balls arranged as monumental sculptural assemblages.
Publication References
Christian Zervos, "Les Dernières oeuvres de Picasso," Paris: Cahiers d'Art, 1929, 6:247.
Documents, deuxième année, 1930, 3:166 (without title).
Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1932, 3, p. 179
Christian Zervos, "Histoire de l'Art Contemporain," Paris: Cahiers d'Art, 1938, p. 264.
_______, Picasso, 1955, 7:273, ill.
"Picasso," Basel: Galerie Beyeler, 1966, no. 38, ill. pl. 38, (not in exhibition)
"Supplement à la Gazette des Beaux Arts," February 1967, 76, no. 387, ill, p. 109.
Robert Goldwater, "Space and Dream," New York: Walker, 1967, p. 28.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, "News" 1968, 30:1-2, p. 19.
Dawn Ades, "Dada and Surrealism Reviewed," London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978, p. 245.
Christa Lichtenstern, "Metamorphose Vom Mythos zum Prozebdenken," Amsterdam: VCmH, Acta Humaniora, 1992, p. 181.
Tobia Bezzola, "Picasso: His First Museum Exhibition 1932," Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel, 2010,pp.166 and 286, color ill.
T.J. Clark, "Picasso and the Truth: From Cubism to Guernica", Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, p. 196, fig. 5.2
Arnhold, Hermann, ed. "Henry Moore: A European Impulse." Münster: LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, 2016.
Rosenthal, Nan, and Ruth E. Fine. The Drawings of Jasper Johns. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1990, figure 112a on page 328.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 1966; Galerie Beyeler, Basel by purchase, 1966; Parke-Bernet Galleries, NY, March 23, 1966, lot 45; G. David Thompson collection, Pittsburgh, by purchase [stolen 1961, recovered by the FBI]; Paul Rosenberg & Co. NY; Paul Rosenberg by restitution September 14,1945, after Nazi looting by Einsatzsstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (PR17), May 9, 1941; Paul Rosenberg, by purchase, 1929; from the artist.
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Inscribed: LL: "Picasso/29"