Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, 1910

• Description


  The portrait’s sitter is Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884–1979), a German-born art dealer, writer, and publisher. Kahnweiler opened an art gallery in Paris in 1907 and in 1908 began representing Pablo Picasso, whom he introduced to Georges Braque. Kahnweiler championed Cubism and purchased many Cubist paintings between 1908 and 1915. Kahnweiler wrote The Rise of Cubism, in 1920, which offered a theoretical framework for the movement. Kahnweiler is believed to have sat as many as thirty times for this portrait.
• Style 


  Analytical Cubism, 1910-12
• Cultural, social, political etc... factors

  Picasso (and fellow Cubist, Braque) developed the faceting technique to allowed for different perspectives/events to be shown simultaneously – a new and experimental reality; a new depiction of space where two-and three dimensions were held in tension.
• Cultural, social, political etc... factors

  French Philosopher Henri Bergson’s 1896 treatise, ‘Matter and Memory’ proved to be hugely influential to avant-garde artists like Picasso (and the Futurists) because he spoke scientifically and philosophically about space and how we receive the ideas of objects from the continuous flux of colour and form that surrounds us and that interior and exterior spaces which we understand as separate are experienced simultaneously in continuity and multiplicity.
• Analytical Cubism


  Characterised by multi-faceted, monochrome palette developed by Picasso and Braque with intersecting planes, suggestive of low-relief and using visual clues (semiotics)
• Cubism


  1. Viewpoint by viewpoint dissection of the subject

  2. Rejected the single-point perspective of the Renaissance
• Cubism


  • Focused more on what we know about the world than what we see
  • Composition is held together by a network of planes, giving a fuller experience of space
  • Light has been used anti-perspectively and no traditional chiaroscuro creates realistic form
• This work is typical of Analytical Cubism
• Picasso was not interested in telling lies on canvases by creating the illusion of true appearances
• Picasso's approach


  1. Broke everything down

  2. Dissected the image (pulling it apart to analyse it)

  3. Recombined the forms
• Picasso's depiction of Kahnweiler

  • Network of semi-transparent surfaces that merge with the atmosphere around him
  • Forms are fractured into various planes and faceted shapes
  • Multiple viewpoints are shown simultaneously
• The man becomes abstracted


  He would be abstract were it not for the subtle attributes of a wave of slicked hair, the faint form of Picasso's newly acquired Muyuki mask, the knot of a tie, eyes, nose, the parallel lines denoting fingers, clasped on his lap, rather traditionally
• The planes flicker in shades of brown, ochre, grey, black, and white
• Lack of colour


  Helps focus our attention on the simultaneity and tension between two and three-dimensional space