Violin and Guitar - Canvas Print

Picasso's "Violin and Guitar" was illustrative of one of the most important years in modern art. In 1913 the preconceptions about painting in place since the Renaissance were being turned on their head. Inspired by the Modernist music of Arnold Schoenberg, Kandinsky and Picasso began to fuse the themes of esoteric musical Modernism to the canvas, and elicited some of the most exciting and electrifying responses in twentieth century art. 1913 also saw the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, a ballet piece attended by the foremost figures in art, architecture, and music, and which ended in a riot. "Violin and Guitar" can be seen as a reaction to this outpouring of public anger over experimentation in art. Rather than take his cues from the esoteric arrangements of Kandinsky, Picasso instead situated his rumination on painting and music firmly in the everyday tastes of the working classes. In his native Spain, the violin and the guitar were the tools of the street-performer, and their arrangement a nod towards the transcendental power of everyday life. An example of the artist's short-lived experiments with Cubism, "Violin and Guitar" is also a testament to his collaborations with Georges Braque and Juan Gris. In the three years before the onset of World War I, Picasso, Braque, and Gris attempted to transform everyday objects through a duplication of viewpoints, thus collapsing the notion of fixed-point perspective that had reigned for five centuries. Combining oil paint, charcoal, and a solitary weave of fabric; this geometric surface is a triumph of artistic modernity at a crucial point in twentieth century history.