Picasso’s Le Vert-Galant (1943)
Picasso, Le Vert-Galant (1943)
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As explained in the entry on Picasso’s still-life Mandolin and Guitar, the landscape here also forms a human head though less obviously so.
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Picasso's Le Vert-Galant compared to a detail of Velazquez's Portrait of Queen Maria Theresa of Spain with two watches
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If you are familiar with the work of Picasso’s favorite artists, you may recognize in the arch of foliage the elaborate floral headdress of Velazquez’s Spanish Queen, Maria Theresa. What, though, does Picasso mean? If, as is always the case, we are looking into the artist's imagination then the plants in the townscape are fused with the queen's headdress to suggest the fertility of Picasso's royal and androgynous mind.
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Picasso, Le Vert-Galant (1943)
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That means, then, that in the middle distance, the doorways are his “eyes” seen through the alter ego of the queen: one light for exterior sight, the other dark for insight.
More Works by Picasso
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Publication Date: 07 Sep 2010
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