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CHAPTER V

Metamorphosis and Surrealism – 1917-1937

EXAMPLES FROM 1917

"Bullfight" 1917 (77) (78) (79) (80) (81)

Picasso metamorphosized the work of Poussin in the years following his involvement with the creation of Cubism. Poussin's "Tancred and Erminia" (77A) was a fertile source for the following drawings of "Bullfights" in 1917: See (77), (78), (79), (80) and (81). "Tancred and Erminia" also supplied the linear rhythms and contours for the complex "Bullfight" drawings later in 1923: (87) and (88).

"Parade" A study 1917 (82)

"Drop Curtain for Parade" 1917 (83)

Meanwhile, in 1917, while he was in Rome, Picasso worked with Satie, Cocteau and Diaghilev on the ballet "Parade." A study (82) and the "Drop Curtain for Parade" (83) were designed from the horses, angels and other figure groups gleaned from Poussin's "Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite." (83A).

"The Happy Family" of 1917-1918 (84)

One of Picasso's earliest acknowledged copies is "The Happy Family" of 1917-1918, (84) after LeNain's "Four Figures at Table" (84A). A detail is shown in (84A). Picasso changed the scale of the figures and applied a pointillistic pattern which focuses on some of the features of the figures, relating the drab seventeenth century painting to the vivid colors of the nineteenth century. Picasso, the "time traveller," moved through the centuries of art history, uniting the styles of different periods, through the magic of his own method of metamorphosis.

Alfred Barr noted the similarity of Picasso's female in the "Sleeping

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