Introduction
Pablo Picasso stands as one of the most influential and pioneering artists of the 20th century. Known for co-founding the Cubist movement, Picasso produced an astounding body of work across various mediums including painting, sculpture, drawing, and ceramics. Throughout his long and prolific career, one motif captivated Picasso more than any other – the guitar.
Guitars appear frequently in Picasso’s oeuvre, serving as both subject and sculptural object. What began as melancholic figures strumming guitars in his early Blue Period took on new radical forms during Picasso’s Cubist period. His abstracted guitar constructions of paper, metal, and found materials reflected his desire to deconstruct perspective and representation. The guitar allowed Picasso to explore formal innovations in art and reimagine traditional sculpture.
Picasso’s radical guitar works would come to inspire not just 20th century art, but modern luthiers and musical instrument design. As we will explore, his iconic guitars still captivate artists, musicians, and audiences today. This article looks back on Picasso’s lifelong fascination with the guitar motif, from early paintings to later syntheses, and his remarkable artistic legacy.
Picasso’s Early Guitar Paintings
Picasso’s early works focused on subjects of poverty and isolation, with muted blue tones that came to define his Blue Period from 1901-1904. One of his most iconic paintings from this time is The Old Guitarist, created in 1903.
The Old Guitarist depicts an elderly, blind, and impoverished man hunched over his guitar. His elongated and emaciated body is indicative of the melancholy tone of the Blue Period. The monochromatic blue palette creates a somber mood. The guitarist seems disconnected from the world, sunken into his music.
The painting is highly symbolic, with the guitar representing the guitarist’s sole remaining joy and purpose in life. The haggard figure epitomizes the lonely, marginalized subjects of Picasso’s early works. The Old Guitarist is considered one of Picasso’s most significant early paintings and a defining work of his Blue Period. Its pathos and minimalist style signaled the young artist’s growing prowess.
Picasso’s Cubist Guitar Period (1912-1914)
Picasso’s Cubist period from 1912-1914 marked a revolutionary shift in his artistic style. The guitar emerged as a central motif during these radical explorations of form and space. In 1912, Picasso created one of his most famous guitar sculptures using simple materials like paper, paperboard, string, and wire. The sculpture captured the spirit of Cubism with its geometric shapes and deconstruction of the guitar form.
Picasso flattened and fragmented the guitar’s body into angular planes, while leaving an open cavity in the center revealing the strings. This sculptural technique directly embodied Picasso’s Cubist style of breaking objects down into abstract shapes. The materials themselves also reflected Cubism, as Picasso incorporated non-traditional media like paper into fine art sculpture.
Just two years later in 1914, Picasso made another guitar sculpture out of more industrial materials – sheet metal, wire, and metal hardware. This second sculpture expanded on his earlier paperboard one, creating a denser web of wires and metal that enveloped the open space in the center. The sheet metal guitar sculpture showed Picasso’s continued exploration of Cubist guitar motifs using everyday materials. Both his 1912 and 1914 guitar sculptures exemplified Picasso’s radical contribution to modern sculpture and three-dimensional Cubist art.
Picasso’s Guitar Collages
During his Cubist period from 1912-1914, Picasso created a series of radical and innovative guitar collages that further abstracted and deconstructed the guitar form. Made from scraps of paper, cardboard, wood, cloth, newspaper, and other found materials, these collages exemplified Picasso’s Cubist aim of breaking down subjects into fragmented geometric planes.
One of his most famous guitar collage works is "Guitar" from 1912. In this piece, Picasso assembled various triangular, rectangular, and circular paper fragments to resemble the body of an abstracted guitar lying on its side. The strings are depicted with thin strips of paper, while collaged letters and words are interspersed throughout the composition. Picasso’s radical juxtaposition of materials and use of multiple perspectives challenged traditional representation.
Similarly, his 1914 collage "Bottle of Bass" features a guitar neck and strings made from a piece of cardboard jutting out diagonally from an assemblage of newspaper and other clippings. Here, the guitar form is even further fractured and intermixed with other objects, once again showcasing Picasso’s ability to deconstruct and reimagine musical instruments. Other notable Cubist guitar collages from this fertile period include "Guitar, Sheet Music and Glass" (1912) and "Guitar and Wine Glass" (1913), among others.
Through his guitar collages, Picasso not only revolutionized sculpture and painting, but the way artists approached subject matter itself. By fracturing the guitar into abstract planes, he found new ways to convey its structure and form. His radical use of everyday materials was also hugely influential to later 20th century art movements like Dada and Surrealism. Picasso’s Cubist guitar collages remain some of the most iconic and groundbreaking works of his career.
Picasso’s Guitar Works at the MoMA
In 2011, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City held a focused exhibition called "Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914" that showcased some of Pablo Picasso’s most iconic guitar-themed works. Curated by Anne Umland and organized by the MoMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, it provided an in-depth look at Picasso’s radical experimentation with the guitar motif during his Cubist period.
The exhibition featured over 100 of Picasso’s Cubist constructions, collages, sculptures, drawings, and paintings featuring guitars from 1912 to 1914. Some of the highlights included:
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Guitar (1912) – One of Picasso’s first cardboard Cubist guitar constructions featuring painted paper, thread, and cutout shapes glued to paperboard. It abstracted and deconstructed the guitar form through geometrical shapes and lines.
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Bottle of Bass (1914) – A guitar-shaped collage made from paper, cardboard, string, and wire that juxtaposed a bottle decanter against the angular guitar body. It exemplified Picasso’s use of everyday materials in his art.
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Sheet Metal Guitar (1914) – A 3D guitar sculpture made from silver and iron sheet metal, wire, and metal screen that built upon similar experiments with the Guitar of 1912. The industrially-inspired materials added new textures.
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The Aficionado (1912) – A classic Cubist portrait painting of a guitar player fragmented into angular planes. It exemplified how Picasso blended his Cubist style with the recurring guitar motif.
The exhibition provided insight into how Picasso returned to and reinvented the guitar in his Cubist works from different perspectives. By showcasing key pieces, it revealed his radical deconstruction of form that would inspire modern artists and musicians alike.
Picasso’s Later Guitar Works
After his initial Cubist period, Picasso continued exploring the guitar motif in various artworks throughout his career. While his style evolved over the decades, the guitar remained a constant source of inspiration for the artist.
One of Picasso’s most famous later guitar-themed works is Guitar from 1924. This painting depicts an abstracted guitar form rendered in bold outlines and colorful, angular planes. While retaining some Cubist elements like geometric shapes and fragmented planes, the overall composition has a more classical, stable structure compared to the radical experimentations of his earlier guitar collages and sculptures.
The 1924 Guitar exemplifies Picasso’s synthesis of modernist abstraction with more traditional representation. The guitar form is still somewhat fractured into flat, intersecting planes, yet it coheres into a recognizable and almost sensuous whole. The strong black outlines further unify the composition while lending a sculptural, plastic feel to the painting.
In subsequent decades, Picasso continued to revisit and riff on the guitar motif, though often with a more subdued and classical approach compared to his earlier radicalism. Works like Guitar on a Table from 1926 and Guitar, Wineglass, Fruit Dish and Bottle from 1944 feature more naturalistic, rounded guitar forms grounded in reality. However, Picasso’s lifelong fascination with the guitar as a conduit for formal experimentation and expressive meaning shines through even in his later iterations of the subject.
Linda Manzer’s Pikasso Guitar
The most famous modern guitar inspired by Picasso’s cubist works is the Pikasso guitar, created by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer in 1984. Manzer was inspired by Picasso’s radical, angular guitar constructions from his cubist period and wanted to design an instrument that captured that avant-garde spirit.
The result was the incredible 42-string Pikasso guitar, named after Picasso’s distinctive cubist style. Its body is an angular, almost cubist-like shape with 42 strings in four separate necks. This unique and sculptural design was directly influenced by Picasso’s 1912 and 1914 paperboard and sheet metal guitar sculptures.
The Pikasso guitar’s most famous player is jazz guitarist Pat Metheny. He utilized the instrument’s complex tonal range on various albums and performances. With 42 strings, the Pikasso allowed for new textures and sounds not possible on a standard 6-string guitar. Metheny helped popularize the Pikasso and demonstrated its capabilities in the hands of a master.
The creation of the Pikasso guitar shows the lasting influence of Picasso’s guitar works on modern luthiers. Just as Picasso deconstructed the traditional form, Manzer’s design pushes the boundaries of guitar construction and playability. The Pikasso embodies the experimental and avant-garde spirit of Picasso’s cubist guitars. Its use by top musicians like Metheny also validates Picasso’s visionary art as something that can inspire great music.
Other Luthiers Inspired by Picasso
Picasso’s innovative guitar artworks have served as an inspiration for many modern luthiers looking to push the boundaries of guitar design and construction. His Cubist deconstructions of the guitar form have prompted some luthiers to create their own radical guitar models.
One example is New York-based luthier Saul Koll who created the aluminum Koll Guitar in 2011. The angular, geometric body of the guitar was directly inspired by Picasso’s Cubist constructions. Koll described it as his homage to Picasso, using interlocking aluminum plates to create a fractured, Cubist form.
Other luthiers like Linda Manzer have crafted guitars with extra necks and bodies inspired by Picasso’s ability to re-imagine and deconstruct the traditional guitar shape. Her 42-string Pikasso guitar mirrors the provocative experimentation of Picasso’s constructions.
Picasso’s sheet metal and wire guitar sculptures have also influenced some luthiers to incorporate more industrial metals and materials into their builds. Guitars made from metal scraps, galvanized steel, or wire have become more common in recent years, expanding the sonic and visual vocabulary of the guitar.
In these ways, Picasso’s radical guitar experiments continue to push luthiers to explore new forms, materials, and designs. His boundary-pushing Cubist constructions still stand as an inspiration for guitar makers looking to innovate and create their own unique instruments.
Picasso’s Guitar Legacy
Picasso’s fascination with the guitar and his revolutionary guitar artworks left a profound legacy on modern art and music. His Cubist guitar constructions from 1912-1914 showed how a traditional artistic subject like an instrument could be deconstructed and reimagined in groundbreaking ways. Picasso’s radical experimentation with fracturing the guitar form and rearranging its parts in two and three dimensions opened the door for countless artists to push the boundaries of sculpture and collage.
Beyond the visual arts, Picasso’s guitars also made their mark on music. The audacious designs of his Cubist guitar sculptures inspired modern luthiers and guitar makers to experiment with new body shapes, materials, and string configurations. Linda Manzer’s Pikasso guitar brilliantly adapted Picasso’s approach to a functioning 42-string instrument. Jazz great Pat Metheny was able to expand the sonic palette of the guitar through Manzer’s Pikasso. Picasso likely never imagined his Cubist artworks would one day result in radical new musical instruments.
While Picasso moved on from his Cubist guitar period after 1914, the pieces he created left an indelible impression. His deconstructed, fractured guitar forms expressed the modern fragmentation and discontinuity of life in the 20th century. Yet they also reflected the guitar’s timeless importance as an instrument of creative expression. Through his relentless innovation and experimentation, Picasso ensured both the artistic and cultural relevance of the guitar for generations to come. His guitar works stand as a testament to the power of radical creative vision.
Conclusion
Picasso’s exploration of the guitar as a central motif throughout his long and prolific career is truly remarkable. From his somber, Blue Period paintings like The Old Guitarist to his radically fragmented Cubist guitar sculptures, collages, and constructions, Picasso revolutionized the way artists approached form, materials, and representation.
The guitars of his Cubist period are particularly iconic, with their almost unrecognizable abstracted shapes that challenged the viewer to rethink visual perception. Notable examples like his 1912 paperboard guitar sculpture and 1914 sheet metal guitar pushed the boundaries of what a guitar could be. The Museum of Modern Art’s 2011 exhibition "Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914" was a testament to the importance of these works in understanding Picasso’s oeuvre.
Beyond their art historical significance, Picasso’s guitar artworks have also directly inspired modern luthiers and guitar makers. Linda Manzer’s incredible 42-string Pikasso guitar, played by the likes of Pat Metheny, pays homage to Picasso’s Cubist constructions in its own sculptural form. Other luthiers continue to find motivation in Picasso’s experimental and pioneering guitar pieces.
In the end, Picasso’s profound and lifelong exploration of the guitar cements his reputation as one of the most innovative and influential artists of the 20th century. His guitar works remain touchstones of modern art and continue to inspire artists in various fields today. Anyone wishing to truly understand Picasso’s genius would do well to study the many iterations of the guitar that appear throughout his storied career.