Nature Morte à la Coupe: The Architecture of the Cubist Still Life
This sophisticated plate, "Nature Morte à la Coupe" (Still Life with Fruit Bowl), is a quintessential Cubist study from the 1962 Un Éventail portfolio. This pochoir is after Picasso’s original ink and charcoal sketch. The composition features a fruit bowl deconstructed into a series of sharp, rhythmic angles and interlocking planes. It serves as a brilliant example of Picasso’s "Analytical" period, where he stripped objects of their traditional form to explore their internal structure and spatial relationships.
The technical creation by the Daniel Jacomet studio is masterful. By utilizing the pochoir process over a lithographic base, Jacomet perfectly captures the stark, graphic intensity of Picasso’s original ink lines and the subtle, smudged gradients of the charcoal shadows. The yellowing of the paper is an intentional reproduction of the original drawing's condition at the time of the pochoir's creation. Printed on heavy Arches paper in a limited edition of 260, the work retains a raw, "drawn" quality that is rare in graphic editions. For collectors, this piece is a definitive look at Picasso’s intellectual rigor, transforming a simple tabletop arrangement into a complex, architectural meditation on vision and form.
- Medium: Pochoir
- Edition: 60 of 260
- Signature: Unsigned
- Paper Type: Arches
- Image size: 18 3/4” x 14”
- Publisher: Leda, Edition’s d’Art, 1962
- Reference: Orozco 213, p. 310