Thannhauser Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above on February 21, 1954

Zurich, Kunsthaus, Picasso, 1932, no. 324

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1920 à 1922, vol. IV, Paris, 1951, no. 446, illustrated pl. 186
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, Neoclassicism II, 1922-1924, San Francisco, 1996, no. 22-241, illustrated p. 84

The work is in very good condition. Executed on buff colored wove paper which has been hinged to a mount along the top edge of its verso. The top edge of the sheet is deckled. There is faint discoloring to the extreme bottom and overall the sheet is slightly time darkened. The upper edge is uneven, probably torn from a book.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Throughout his career, Picasso repeatedly turned to the traditional genre of still-life painting as a vehicle to disrupt pictorial conventions and to push form to its limits. His Cubist period prior to World War I fragmented and bifurcated forms, presenting several simultaneous views of rather conventional domestic objects. Then, in the spirit of the post-war "call to order," Cubist vocabulary was appropriated by Purism, which replaced the multiple depictions of bottles, guitars and wine glasses with figural stability and precision, thereby providing a model of rational order in response to the war's senseless and profound destruction.

Although he rarely spoke about his paintings, Picasso commented on the liberties he took with his still lifes: "It is a misfortune—and probably my delight—to use things as my passions tell me... How awful for a painter who loathes apples to have to use them all the time because they go so well with the cloth! I put all the things I like into my pictures. Things, so much the worse for them; they just have to put up with it" (quoted in Christian Zervos, "Conversations avec Picasso," in Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1935, pp. 173-74). As the present work attests and John Richardson has observed, still life was the genre which Picasso "would eventually explore more exhaustively and develop more imaginatively than any other artist in history" (John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. ll, New York, 1991, p. 441).