Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds
Audio Exhibition
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, active in France, 1881–1973), Landscape, Mougins, March 31, 1972, oil on canvas, Musée national Picasso–Paris, Dation Pablo Picasso, 1979, MP227 © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society, (ARS), New York, Courtesy American Federation of Arts
Verbal Description
Hello, my name is Jessica Spradling, the museum’s Art Bridges Fellow. I will be reading a description of the painting entitled Landscape in Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds.
Pablo Picasso, a Spanish artist who lived from 1881 to 1973, painted Landscape in oil on canvas on March 31, 1972, in Mougins, France. It is in the collection of the Musée national Picasso–Paris, Dation Pablo Picasso, where its reference number is 1979, MP227.
This large horizontally oriented painting, titled Landscape, measures about 51 by 64 inches or 130 by 162 centimeters. This frenetic picture appears to be a vista captured by the artist from a porch or balcony space. In the foreground, he includes, using thick black lines, what may be a railing that comes to a point, forming a corner in the center of the work. Beneath this railing, additional lines, both straight and angled, could be additional porch supports. Behind these, we see a mix of white, green, and light grey that hint at a grassy expanse and village space. In the midground, black and purple-outlined shapes in white and grey look like buildings in a town center. Palm trees in black and grey line the background. In the center of the picture, the artist includes a black outline of a mountain using two thick lines and white to fill the space.