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Picasso: The Artist's Studio

About the Exhibition

Exhibition Highlights


<I>La Vie (Life)</I>, 1903<BR>Oil on canvas <BR>The Cleveland Museum of Art. Gift of the Hanna Fund 1945.24 <BR>[Cat. no. 5]
La Vie (Life), 1903
Oil on canvas
The Cleveland Museum of Art. Gift of the Hanna Fund 1945.24
[Cat. no. 5]
©2001 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

La Vie (Life), 1903

La Vie (Life), 1903
Oil on canvas
The Cleveland Museum of Art. Gift of the Hanna Fund 1945.24
[Cat. no. 5]
©2001 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Begun in Barcelona in the spring of 1903, La Vie (Life) is Picasso's first major painting on the theme of the artist's studio. Scholars have traditionally interpreted its obscure subject either as an allegory of sacred and profane love or a variation on the "cycle-of-life" theme. Recent scholarship now proposes that the painting may also represent an allegory of the life of the modern artist. This interpretation notes that all four surviving preparatory studies for the painting clearly situate the scene inside an artist's studio, with Picasso depicted in the role of the artist standing between a naked model and a painting set on an easel. This arrangement implies that the artist's function is to transform one type of "life" into another, so that physical substance (the model) becomes part of the ideal realm of art (the canvas on the easel). After completing most of the painting, Picasso reworked it extensively. He eliminated the top of the easel and added the crouching woman over the easel's legs at the lower center. The diminutive scale of the figures in the two small scenes at the center, along with the heavy lines or "boxes" isolating them from other figures, indicates that these areas represent paintings or drawings in an artist's studio. The stern demeanor of the robed woman holding the baby, along with the nude women in the central scenes, may also be interpreted as personifying potential hazards in the life of the modern artist: alienation, abandonment, suffering, and early death.

Page 2 of 9 | On the next page: Preparatory Drawing for "La Vie," 1903