The artwork titled “Partition, bottle of port, guitar, playing cards” was created by the renowned artist Pablo Picasso in the year 1917. This piece is executed in oil on canvas and belongs to the Synthetic Cubism movement. It is a still life painting that currently resides in a private collection.
The artwork presents a fragmented and abstracted composition, typical of the Synthetic Cubist style wherein objects are broken down, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form. In this artwork, the viewer can discern the suggestions of a variety of objects such as a partition, a bottle labeled ‘PORTO’, which denotes a bottle of port wine, a guitar, and playing cards, all of which are common motifs in Cubist still lives. The composition fuses these items against a neutral background, with the objects’ geometry and space defined by intersecting planes and shifting perspectives that challenge traditional three-dimensional representations. The palette is relatively subdued, consisting primarily of earth tones, off-whites, and blacks, with touches of color that bring attention to certain elements, like the playing cards. The overall effect is one of dynamic tension and playful formal experimentation, hallmarks of Picasso’s work and the Synthetic Cubist aesthetic.
