Brick Factory at Tortosa
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''Brick Factory at Tortosa'' (') is a 1909
oil on canvas Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...
painting by
Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
, which he created during a visit to
Horta de Sant Joan Horta de Sant Joan is a village and municipality in comarca of Terra Alta in Catalonia, Spain. Pablo Picasso spent a year in this town and learned a considerable amount of his artistic skills in the town. History Because of its location on a s ...
in Catalonia. It depicts a landscape of a factory and palm trees, which are presented in a simplified, geometric style. The work belongs to
Picasso's African Period Picasso's African Period, which lasted from 1906 to 1909, was the period when Pablo Picasso painted in a style which was strongly influenced by African sculpture, particularly traditional African masks and art of ancient Egypt, in addition to no ...
and is considered a Proto-Cubist work. It is held in the collection of
The State Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest ...
in Saint Petersburg.


Background

Picasso produced ''Brick Factory at Tortosa'' in the summer of 1909, when he was aged 28. It was created while he was on holiday at
Horta de Sant Joan Horta de Sant Joan is a village and municipality in comarca of Terra Alta in Catalonia, Spain. Pablo Picasso spent a year in this town and learned a considerable amount of his artistic skills in the town. History Because of its location on a s ...
in Catalonia, Spain from Paris. The painting displays Picasso's developing style towards
Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
, which would eventually become fully formed in 1910 with paintings like ''
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler ''Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler'' (Spanish: ''Retrato de Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler'') is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso in the Analytical Cubism style. It was completed in the autumn of 1910 and depicts the prominent art dealer ...
''. The painting was one of several that Picasso produced in Southern Spain during this year, including ''The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro,'' ''The Oil Mill'', and ''Paysage, Horta de Ebro'', landscapes that display the same simplified geometric style. Horta de Sant Joan played an important role in Picasso's development as an artist. He stayed in the village twice, once as a teenager in 1898 with his friend and fellow art student, Manuel Pallarés, and again from 5 June to September 1909. During his first visit, Picasso had experienced a new sense of freedom, set apart from the artistic restrictions of his father,
José Ruiz y Blasco José Ruiz y Blasco (12 April 1838 – 3 May 1913) was a Spanish painter, an art teacher, and the father of artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881–1973). Family life José Ruiz y Blasco was born in Málaga, Spain in 1838 and grew up in a midd ...
and ''La Academía de Bellas Artes.'' Picasso stated, "Everything that I know I have learned in Horta". He returned to Horta in the summer of 1909, ten years after his first visit. By this point, he had achieved a level of prestige as an artist in Paris and he was visiting with his girlfriend
Fernande Olivier Fernande Olivier (born Amélie Lang; 6 June 1881 – 29 January 1966) was a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model and first muse of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him. Pic ...
. This visit inspired Picasso to produce paintings dominated by landscapes depicted in a geometric style. It was a period in which he rediscovered himself as an artist and developed an experimental new style that would eventually lead to Cubism. He left the village at the beginning of September 1909 and never returned.


Description

Picasso painted ''Brick Factory at Tortosa'' using oils on canvas. The painting measures 50.7 cm x 60.2 cm. The image depicts a factory which was an unusual subject for the period, as it departed from the typical 19th century landscapes of distant smokestacks. In this painting Picasso reduced the factory and its chimney to rough geometric shapes, simplifying the forms to almost unrecognisable objects. He conveyed the summer heat and dryness of the landscape by including a grey sky and landscape in the background. The volumes of the structure are deliberately sketchy, presented using grey and orange planes, rather than realistic external facades. The shapes of the building have been presented in a way that is neither neat or regular. Picasso intended to create an abstract image that is difficult to logically describe. In his book, ''Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo'', Christopher Green remarked that the factory and palm trees depicted in the painting almost certainly did not exist in real life. John Richardson suggested that the palm trees in the painting may have been a series of olive presses known by locals as "the factory". Further to this suggestion of an invented factory,
Roland Penrose Sir Roland Algernon Penrose (14 October 1900 – 23 April 1984) was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom. During the Second World W ...
had recorded a meeting with Manuel Pallarés, who told him that the factory was an invention and did not exist in that location. Green goes on to suggest that Picasso may have been depicting a brickworks outside
Tortosa Tortosa (; ) is the capital of the ''Catalonia/Comarques, comarca'' of Baix Ebre, in Catalonia, Spain. Tortosa is located at above sea level, by the Ebro river, protected on its northern side by the mountains of the Cardó Massif, of which Buin ...
or even the factories and palm trees of
Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
. He opines that this depiction of the factory can be seen as a representation of the modernising view of Catalonia or of modernity in opposition to nature.


Significance and legacy

Jonathan Jones of ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' called the work "formidable" and viewed the painting as "an experiment in how brutally you can reduce, simplify, solidify and abstract forms and still produce a picture that is not simply recognisable, but profoundly full of life." Laurent Le Bon, Chairman of the
Musée Picasso :''This article refers to the museum in Paris. There are a number of other Picasso museums.'' The Musée Picasso ( en, Picasso Museum) is an art gallery located in the Hôtel Salé ( en, Salé Hall) in rue de Thorigny, in the Marais district ...
in Paris, remarked on the importance of this period and location in relation to Picasso's development as an artist. "The artist did not travel much, but here we can see how he revolutionised the way the world is represented through art. ..his is where the artist found a different way of seeing things."


Provenance

The painting was originally in the collection of
Sergei Shchukin Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (russian: Серге́й Ива́нович Щу́кин; 10 January 1936) was a Russian businessman who became an art collector, mainly of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Early life and family Sergei I ...
. It was acquired by the State Museum of New Western Art in Moscow and then transferred to The State Hermitage Museum in 1948.


External links

*
Brick Factory at Tortosa
' at The State Hermitage Museum


References

{{Pablo Picasso 1909 paintings Paintings by Pablo Picasso Paintings in the collection of the Hermitage Museum Landscape paintings