id: 152776 accession number: 1985.57 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1985.57 updated: 2020-07-03 09:00:45.800000 Bull Skull, Fruit, Pitcher, 1939. Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973). Oil on canvas; framed: 85.7 x 117.2 x 7 cm (33 3/4 x 46 1/8 x 2 3/4 in.); unframed: 65 x 92 cm (25 9/16 x 36 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1985.57 © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York title: Bull Skull, Fruit, Pitcher title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1939 creation date earliest: 1939 creation date latest: 1939 current location: 223 20th Century Avant-Garde creditline: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund copyright: © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York --- culture: Spain, 20th century technique: oil on canvas department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960 type: Painting find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) - artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973), the most prolific and influential artist of the 20th century, shifted the emphasis of art from its traditional concern with beauty toward radical innovation. The son of an art teacher, Picasso demonstrated remarkable talents as a child and entered the royal art academy in Madrid at age sixteen. Less than a year later, he abandoned his studies and soon joined several avant-garde artist and anarchist groups in Barcelona and Paris. After passing through a succession of stylistic periods, most notably the Blue (1901-1904) and Rose (1904-1906) Periods, he collaborated with Georges Braque (1882-1963) in 1908 to invent Cubism, a revolutionary method of restructuring pictorial space. Picasso remained active until his death in 1973. Although his art still appears radical, many of his works are over one hundred years old. Cubism, perhaps the most important development in 20th-century art, was invented around 1908 by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963). The most revolutionary aspect of the style was not its obvious emphasis on geometric form; rather, it was the introduction of a radically new approach to configuring pictorial space. Since the Renaissance, artists had used various methods to create the illusion of distant space receding behind the canvas surface. The Cubists rejected that idea and collapsed space by compressing foreground, middle ground, and background into a continuous web of overlapping, intersecting planes. During the 1910s, other painters and sculptors embraced or adapted Cubism to their own ends. This revolutionary approach inspired a host of related movements and continues to influence the visual language of artists, architects, and designers throughout the world. --- measurements: Framed: 85.7 x 117.2 x 7 cm (33 3/4 x 46 1/8 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 65 x 92 cm (25 9/16 x 36 1/4 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Signed lower center: "12.1.39. Picasso" translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: The Year in Review for 1985 opening date: 1986-02-12T05:00:00 The Year in Review for 1985. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 12-April 20, 1986). title: Creativity in Art and Science, 1860-1960 opening date: 1987-09-16T04:00:00 Creativity in Art and Science, 1860-1960. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 16-November 8, 1987). title: Picasso: The Love and the Anguish--The Road to Guernica opening date: 1995-10-31T05:00:00 Picasso: The Love and the Anguish--The Road to Guernica. National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (organizer); Tobu Museum of Art. title: Picasso and the War: 1937-1945 opening date: 1998-10-10T00:00:00 Picasso and the War: 1937-1945. Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA (organizer) (October 10, 1998-January 3, 1999); Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York (January 27-April 26, 1999). title: Picasso. Indoor, Outdoor Landscapes opening date: 1999-10-26T00:00:00 Picasso. Indoor, Outdoor Landscapes. Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Spain (organizer) (October 26, 1999-January 30, 2000). title: Picasso. Sous le soleil de Mithra opening date: 2001-06-29T00:00:00 Picasso. Sous le soleil de Mithra. Musée National Picasso, Paris, France (organizer) (November 27, 2001-March 4, 2002). title: Masterworks from The Phillips Collection opening date: 2005-02-20T00:00:00 Masterworks from The Phillips Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 20-May 29, 2005). title: Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2006-05-27T00:00:00 Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (June 9-September 16, 2007); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 2007-January 13, 2008); Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN (February 15-June 1, 2008). title: Barcelona & Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí (1868-1939) opening date: 2006-10-15T00:00:00 Barcelona & Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí (1868-1939). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 15, 2006-January 7, 2007); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (co-organizer) (March 4-June 3, 2007). title: Picasso's Studio opening date: 2014-02-10T00:00:00 Picasso's Studio. Fundación MAPFRE (organizer) (February 10-May 11, 2014). title: Picasso and Paper opening date: 2020-01-25T05:00:00 Picasso and Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (co-organizer) (September 22-December 13, 2020). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE (P. Rosenberg, New York, NY) date: footnotes: citations: Walter Bareiss [1919-2007] Greenwich, CT date: 1950 footnotes: citations: (E. V. Thaw, New York, NY, 1985, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) date: 1985 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1985- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: Picasso painted this still life on January 29, 1939, just after the death of his mother and the fall of his beloved Barcelona to the fascists during the Spanish civil war. This painting expresses Picasso's despair through the bull's skull covered with decaying flesh, perhaps symbolizing brutality and darkness. Amid the horror and anguish, a flowering tree referring to the sacred oak of Guernica sprouts in the moonlight, suggesting hope for the rebirth of democracy in Spain. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS page number: url: Herschel Browning Chipp, Alan Wofsy, and Fernand Mourlot. Picasso's paintings, watercolors, drawings and sculpture: a comprehensive illustrated catalogue, 1885-1973. San Francisco, CA: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1995. page number: Reproduced: p. 216 url: Nash, Steven A., Robert Rosenblum, and Brigitte Baer. Picasso and the War Years, 1937-1945. New York, NY.: Thames and Hudson, 1998. page number: Reproduced: no. 27 url: Warncke, Carsten-Peter, Ingo F. Walther, and Michael Hulse. Pablo Picasso: 1881-1973. Koln, Germany: Taschen, 1998. page number: Mentioned: p. 37; Reproduced: p. 39 url: Ocaña, Naria-Teresa. Picasso: Indoor & Outdoor Landscapes. Madrid, Spain: Electa, 1999. page number: Reproduced: p. 39 url: Robinson, William H., Jordi Falgàs, Carmen Belen Lord, and Josefina Alix Trueba. Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2006. page number: Reproduced: p. 478 url: Kelly, Raymond J. To Be, or Not to Be: Four Hundred Years of Vanitas Painting. Flint, MI: Flint Institute of Arts, 2006. page number: Reproduced: p. 45, fig. 20 url: Fundación Mapfre, Antonia Castaño, M. Teresa Ocaña, Neil Cox, Brigitte Léal, Valeriano Bozal Fernández, and Christopher Green. Picasso en el taller: Madrid, Spain : Fundación MAPFRE, Instituto de Cultura, 2014. page number: url: Fundación Mapfre, Antonia Castaño, M. Teresa Ocaña, Neil Cox, Brigitte Léal, Valeriano Bozal Fernández, Christopher Green, and Pablo Picasso. Picasso en el taller: 12 febrero-11 mayo 2014. Madrid, Spain : Fundación MAPFRE, Instituto de Cultura, 2014. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 170-171 url: --- IMAGES