Picasso, Pablo Houses on the Hill, Horta de Ebro Horta de Ebro, summer 1909 Oil on canvas 25 5/8 x 31 7/8 in. (65 x 81 cm.) The Museum of Modern Art, New York Daix 278

From John Golding, "Cubism, A History and an Analysis, 1907-1914":

"Picasso...executed several landscapes at Horta de San Juan. Trees and natural forms are here almost completely eliminated, and the concern is with the relationships between the cubic, block-like buildings and the reconciliation of their obvious solidity with the picture plane. Color is even more limited than before, and the palette for the succeeding years is established: some of the paintings are in earth colors, grays and blacks, with a few touches of dull green, while others are in softer gray-blues and buffs. In all the paintings the deviations from traditional perspective, which in landscape painting had hitherto been only slight, are carried to new lengths. Not only is there no central vanishing point, but the perspective, rather than being convergent is actually divergent, so that the rooftops and sides of the buildings are often broadest at their furthest ends, and have the effect of opening up, fan-wise, on to the picture plane. Picasso's use of light is by now completely arbitrary: darks and lights are opposed to each other simply to accentuate the incisive quality of the outlines and to throw form more sharply into relief. Since atmospheric perspective is disregarded also, the furthest buildings appear to be placed above rather than behind the ones in the foreground. The picture plane is further stressed by the device of dropping the small doors or openings below the bases of the buildings, and by the way in which some of the forms are opened up into each other and fused. The sky, too, is treated as a series of planes continuing the composition up to the top of the canvas, so that there is very little suggestion of depth even behind the buildings and mountains on the horizon."