Brick Factory at Tortosa

Last updated
Brick Factory at Tortosa
Pablo Picasso, 1909, Brick Factory at Tortosa, oil on canvas, 50.7 x 60.2 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.jpg
Artist Pablo Picasso
Year1909
MediumOil on canvas
Movement Proto-Cubism
Dimensions50.7 cm× 60.2 cm(20.0 in× 23.7 in)
Location The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Brick Factory at Tortosa (L'Usine, Horta de Ebro) is a 1909 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso, which he created during a visit to Horta de Sant Joan in Catalonia. It depicts a landscape of a factory and palm trees, which are presented in a simplified, geometric style. The work belongs to Picasso's African Period and is considered a Proto-Cubist work. It is held in the collection of The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

Contents

Background

Picasso produced Brick Factory at Tortosa in the summer of 1909, when he was aged 28. It was created while he was on holiday at Horta de Sant Joan in Catalonia, Spain from Paris. The painting displays Picasso's developing style towards Cubism, which would eventually become fully formed in 1910 with paintings like Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler . [1]

The painting was one of several that Picasso produced in Southern Spain during this year, including The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro,The Oil Mill, and Paysage, Horta de Ebro, landscapes that display the same simplified geometric style. [2] [3] [4]

Horta de Sant Joan played an important role in Picasso's development as an artist. He stayed in the village twice, once as a teenager in 1898 with his friend and fellow art student, Manuel Pallarés, and again from 5 June to September 1909. During his first visit, Picasso had experienced a new sense of freedom, set apart from the artistic restrictions of his father, José Ruiz y Blasco and La Academía de Bellas Artes. Picasso stated, "Everything that I know I have learned in Horta". He returned to Horta in the summer of 1909, ten years after his first visit. By this point, he had achieved a level of prestige as an artist in Paris and he was visiting with his girlfriend Fernande Olivier. This visit inspired Picasso to produce paintings dominated by landscapes depicted in a geometric style. It was a period in which he rediscovered himself as an artist and developed an experimental new style that would eventually lead to Cubism. He left the village at the beginning of September 1909 and never returned. [5]

Description

Picasso painted Brick Factory at Tortosa using oils on canvas. The painting measures 50.7 cm x 60.2 cm. The image depicts a factory which was an unusual subject for the period, as it departed from the typical 19th century landscapes of distant smokestacks. In this painting Picasso reduced the factory and its chimney to rough geometric shapes, simplifying the forms to almost unrecognisable objects. He conveyed the summer heat and dryness of the landscape by including a grey sky and landscape in the background. The volumes of the structure are deliberately sketchy, presented using grey and orange planes, rather than realistic external facades. The shapes of the building have been presented in a way that is neither neat or regular. Picasso intended to create an abstract image that is difficult to logically describe. [1]

In his book, Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo, Christopher Green remarked that the factory and palm trees depicted in the painting almost certainly did not exist in real life. John Richardson suggested that the palm trees in the painting may have been a series of olive presses known by locals as "the factory". Further to this suggestion of an invented factory, Roland Penrose had recorded a meeting with Manuel Pallarés, who told him that the factory was an invention and did not exist in that location. Green goes on to suggest that Picasso may have been depicting a brickworks outside Tortosa or even the factories and palm trees of Barcelona. He opines that this depiction of the factory can be seen as a representation of the modernising view of Catalonia or of modernity in opposition to nature. [6]

Significance and legacy

Jonathan Jones of The Guardian called the work "formidable" [7] and viewed the painting as "an experiment in how brutally you can reduce, simplify, solidify and abstract forms and still produce a picture that is not simply recognisable, but profoundly full of life." [1]

Laurent Le Bon, Chairman of the Musée Picasso in Paris, remarked on the importance of this period and location in relation to Picasso's development as an artist. "The artist did not travel much, but here we can see how he revolutionised the way the world is represented through art.[...]This is where the artist found a different way of seeing things." [8]

Provenance

The painting was originally in the collection of Sergei Shchukin. It was acquired by the State Museum of New Western Art in Moscow and then transferred to The State Hermitage Museum in 1948. [9]

Related Research Articles

Cubism Early-20th-century avant-garde art movement

Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.

Tortosa Municipality in Catalonia, Spain

Tortosa is the capital of the comarca of Baix Ebre, in Catalonia, Spain.

André Derain

André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.

<i>Modernisme</i> Architectural and artistic movement originating in late-19th-century Catalonia, Spain

Modernisme, also known as Catalan modernism, is the historiographic denomination given to an art and literature movement associated with the search of a new entitlement of Catalan culture, one of the most predominant cultures within Spain. Nowadays, it is considered a movement based on the cultural revindication of a Catalan identity. Its main form of expression was in architecture, but many other arts were involved, and especially the design and the decorative arts, which were particularly important, especially in their role as support to architecture. Modernisme was also a literary movement.

Jean Metzinger French painter (1883-1956)

Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1900 to 1904, were influenced by the neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat and Henri-Edmond Cross. Between 1904 and 1907 Metzinger worked in the Divisionist and Fauvist styles with a strong Cézannian component, leading to some of the first proto-Cubist works.

Auguste Herbin

Auguste Herbin was a French painter of modern art. He is best known for his Cubist and abstract paintings consisting of colorful geometric figures. He co-founded the groups Abstraction-Création and Salon des Réalités Nouvelles which promoted non-figurative abstract art.

Picassos African Period Painting series by Pablo Picasso

Picasso's African Period, which lasted from 1906 to 1909, was the period when Pablo Picasso painted in a style which was strongly influenced by African sculpture, particularly traditional African masks and art of ancient Egypt, in addition to non-African influences including Iberian sculpture, and the art of Paul Cézanne and El Greco. This proto-Cubist period following Picasso's Blue Period and Rose Period has also been called the Negro Period, or Black Period. Picasso collected and drew inspiration from African art during this period, but also for many years after it.

Museu Picasso Art Museum in Barcelona, Spain

The Museu Picasso, located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, houses one of the most extensive collections of artworks by the 20th-century Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. With 4,251 works exhibited by the painter, the museum has one of the most complete permanent collections of works. The museum is housed in five adjoining medieval palaces in Barcelona's La Ribera neighborhood, in the Old City, and more specifically, it is located on Montcada Street, a formerly very prestigious street home to wealthy merchants and nobility from the Gothic to the Baroque periods. It opened to the public on 9 March 1963, becoming the first museum dedicated to Picasso's work and the only one created during the artist's lifetime. It has since been declared a museum of national interest by the Government of Catalonia.

Arens de Lledó Place in Aragon, Spain

Arens de Lledó or Arenys de Lledó is a municipality located in the Matarraña/Matarranya comarca, province of Teruel, Aragon, Spain. According to the 2008 census (INE), the municipality has a population of 217 inhabitants, and covers an area of 34.27 square kilometres. It is situated in the Franja de Ponent.

Henri Le Fauconnier

Henri Victor Gabriel Le Fauconnier was a French Cubist painter born in Hesdin. Le Fauconnier was seen as one of the leading figures among the Montparnasse Cubists. At the 1911 Salon des Indépendants Le Fauconnier and colleagues Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger and Robert Delaunay caused a scandal with their Cubist paintings. He was in contacts with many European avant-garde artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, writing a theoretical text for the catalogue of the Neue Künstlervereinigung in Munich, of which he became a member. His paintings were exhibited in Moscow reproduced as examples of the latest art in Der Blaue Reiter Almanach.

Horta de Sant Joan Municipality in Catalonia, Spain

Horta de Sant Joan is a village and municipality in comarca of Terra Alta in Catalonia, Spain. Pablo Picasso spent a year in this town and learned a considerable amount of his artistic skills in the town.

Catalan Romanesque Churches of the Vall de Boí

The Churches of the Vall de Boí are a set of nine Early Romanesque churches declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO and located in the Vall de Boí, in the Catalan comarca of Alta Ribagorça.

Olot school

The Olot school of landscape painting is a group of painters that created an artistic style in the second half of the 19th century. It includes not simply artists from Olot, but all artists whose artworks were inspired by the countryside of Olot. By extension, artists connected with Olot and its comarca, Garrotxa.

<i>Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu on a Tandem</i>

Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu on a Tandem is a painting by Ramon Casas in exhibition at the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona.

Joaquin Mir Trinxet

Joaquin Mir Trinxet or Joaquin Mir y Trinxet was a Spanish artist known for his use of color in his paintings. He lived through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona. His paintings helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme.

Proto-Cubism Phase in art history

Proto-Cubism is an intermediary transition phase in the history of art chronologically extending from 1906 to 1910. Evidence suggests that the production of proto-Cubist paintings resulted from a wide-ranging series of experiments, circumstances, influences and conditions, rather than from one isolated static event, trajectory, artist or discourse. With its roots stemming from at least the late 19th century this period can be characterized by a move towards the radical geometrization of form and a reduction or limitation of the color palette. It is essentially the first experimental and exploratory phase of an art movement that would become altogether more extreme, known from the spring of 1911 as Cubism.

<i>Baigneuses</i> (Metzinger)

Baigneuses, also called Bathers, is a Proto-Cubist painting, now lost or missing, created circa 1908 by the French artist and theorist Jean Metzinger. Possibly exhibited during the spring of 1908 at the Salon des Indépendants. This black-and-white image of Metzinger's painting, the only known photograph of the work, was reproduced in Gelett Burgess, "The Wild Men of Paris", Architectural Record, May 1910. The painting was also reproduced in The New York Times, 8 October 1911, in an article titled "The 'Cubists' Dominate Paris' Fall Salon", and subtitled, "Eccentric School of Painting Increases Its Vogue in the Current Art Exhibition - What Its Followers Attempt to Do".

<i>The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations</i>

Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques, is a book written by Guillaume Apollinaire between 1905 and 1912, published in 1913. This was the third major text on Cubism; following Du "Cubisme" by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger (1912); and André Salmon, Histoire anecdotique du cubisme (1912).

<i>Au Lapin Agile</i> Painting by Pablo Picasso

Au Lapin Agile is a 1905 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It depicts the interior of the Lapin Agile, a famous cabaret club in the Montmartre area of Paris. The composition was produced during Picasso's Rose Period and includes a self-portrait of the artist who frequented the club in his youth. The painting is listed as one of the most expensive paintings after achieving a price of $40.7 million at Sotheby's auction on 27 November 1989. It is housed in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Jones, Jonathan (February 6, 2009). "Picasso's eyes perceived the infinite complexity of life". The Guardian. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  2. "The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro". MoMA. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  3. "The Oil Mill Horta de Ebro (present-day Horta de Sant Joan), summer 1909". MoMA. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  4. "Paysage, Horta de Ebro". Denver Art Museum. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  5. "The Two Stages at Horta de Ebre". Centre Picasso d'Orta. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  6. Green, Christopher (January 2005). Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo. p. 146. ISBN   9780300104127.
  7. Jones, Jonathan (December 2, 2001). "Poussin to Picasso". The Guardian. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  8. "Picasso museum in Horta de Sant Joan fully backed by Chairman of Picasso Museum in Paris". Catalan News. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  9. "Brick Factory at Tortosa". The State Hermitage Museum. Retrieved 4 January 2021.