
Not on display
- Artist
- Pablo Picasso 1881–1973
- Original title
- Le Pichet noir et la tête de mort
- Medium
- Lithograph on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 322 × 440 mm
support: 330 × 440 mm
frame: 556 × 676 × 55 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Bequeathed by Elly Kahnweiler 1991 to form part of the gift of Gustav and Elly Kahnweiler, accessioned 1994
- Reference
- P11365
Summary
This lithograph depicts a jug, a human skull and an open book on a table. Picasso made it in the studio of the lithographer Fernand Mourlot in Paris using lithographic crayon and ink, which he scraped back with a tool in a number of areas to create highlights and sharp definition.
All angular rhythms, sharp edges and strongly contrasting areas of black and white, this macabre print was made on 20 February 1946 and can be seen as associated with the suffering and death of the Second World War. On the same day Picasso made another lithograph entitled Composition with Skull. Although identical in composition to Black Jug and Skull this second print was made with a lighter, more immediate touch, using lithographic crayon only, and does not convey the same menacing atmosphere.
The scene depicted here is sombre and restrained; it belongs to the tradition of the seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes known as vanitas. The name of these still lifes comes from the Old Testament’s Book of Ecclesiastes (1:2), ‘Vanitas vanitatum ... et omnia vanitas’ (‘Vanity of vanities ... all is vanity’). Vanitas still lifes comment on the transitoriness of worldly pleasures and the inevitability of death through objects that function symbolically. The book traditionally alludes to excessive pride through learning and the wine jug to the transitoriness of worldly pleasures. The skull is a memento mori, a reminder of the inevitable approach of death. Picasso was superstitious about death, kept a skull in his studio and had included human or animal skulls in his work as early as 1908 (see Composition with Skull, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg).
This print was published by the Galerie Louise Leiris on white Arches wove paper in an edition that comprised eighteen artist’s proofs plus fifty signed and numbered prints, of which this is number thirty-nine.
Further reading
Fernand Mourlot, Picasso Lithographe, Paris 1970, reproduced p.43
Brigitte Baer, Picasso the Printmaker: Graphics from the Marina Picasso Collection, exhibition catalogue, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas 1983
Giorgia Bottinelli, ‘Pablo Picasso’, in Jennifer Mundy (ed.), Cubism and its Legacy: The Gift of Gustav and Elly Kahnweiler, exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern, London 2004, pp.88-90, reproduced p.91
Giorgia Bottinelli
August 2004
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Display caption
This sombre lithograph is in the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes known as vanitas, which comment on the transitoriness of worldly pleasures. A book traditionally alludes to excessive pride through learning, and a wine jug to temporary pleasure. The skull is a memento mori, or reminder of death. Picasso was superstitious about death and kept a skull in his own studio, which appeared in a number of his works. Made on 20 February 1946, this print is inevitably associated with the widespread suffering caused by the Second World War.
Gallery label, August 2004
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Explore
- emotions, concepts and ideas(16,416)
-
- emotions and human qualities(5,345)
-
- anxiety(1,028)
- universal concepts(6,387)
-
- menace(209)
- military: World War II(1,269)
-
- World War II - non-specific(1,132)
- reading, writing, printed matter(5,159)
-
- book - non-specific(1,954)
- jug(228)
- birth to death(1,472)
-
- mortality(49)
You might like
-
Pablo Picasso Bust of a Woman
1944 -
Pablo Picasso Composition
1948 -
Pablo Picasso Faun Revealing a Sleeping Woman (Jupiter and Antiope, after Rembrandt)
1936 -
Pablo Picasso Woman in an Armchair No.1 (The Polish Cloak)
1949 -
Pablo Picasso Woman at the Window
1952 -
Pablo Picasso Neo-Classical Painter in his Studio
1963 -
Pablo Picasso Head of a Young Boy
1945 -
Pablo Picasso Dove
1949 -
Pablo Picasso Dance of the Banderillas
1954 -
Pablo Picasso Portrait of a Woman after Cranach the Younger
1958 -
Pablo Picasso Etching: 3 February 1970 IV (5, 6 March 1970) (L.10)
1970 -
Pablo Picasso Goat’s Skull, Bottle and Candle
1952 -
Pablo Picasso Dora Maar Seated
1938 -
Pablo Picasso The Studio
1955 -
Pablo Picasso Weeping Woman
1937