Picasso Guitars 1912–1914

Picasso's procedures of cutting and pasting are at their most reductive in Violin, where they are visible only in front of a direct source of light. Pasted inside a sheet of paper that has been folded and sealed around three edges is a silhouetted paper cutout into which Picasso scissored shapes from his standard vocabulary of musical instrument forms, including melon-slice base, slanting strings, and disproportionately sized and differently shaped sound holes, all of which he used in other works of the period. A few sketchy lines on the inside surface of the paper complete the composition, which is exemplary of Picasso's cross-disciplinary experiments at this time in relief, drawing, collage, and the light-sensitive medium of photography.