Descripción
In 1970, shortly after the death of Yvonne Zervos, the organiser of the splendid exhibition at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, Picasso’s characters arrived – one hundred and seventy-five oil paintings and fifty-five drawings that filled every room and every corner, creating a splendid feast of colour and joy. It was the triumph of art over death. Picasso completed this incredible work at the age of eighty-eight, between 4 January 1969 and 2 February 1970, that is, at a rate of one painting every fifty-four hours. It was about bringing the past into the present and breaking once more with the old forms that limited his art, as no other artist had done before.
Among these creations, the musketeers stand out: men with or without feathered hats, with or without swords, with moustaches of all shapes and styles, with strange and wild expressions, loaded with history and experience, daring and defiant, dressed in bright colors, drawn with extraordinarily fast lines, but who, despite the austerity of the detail, retained what was necessary to rise, fully alive, in a combination of emotion and irony.
The musketeer reproduced here is one of the most outstanding of this series. The chromaticism of bright reds from another world with the sparkling golds meandering between the black of the hair and beard and the paleness of the imposing and daring face, which preserves, with implacable irony, the wicked look. Mastery of color and form that the hand of the Master gave us in his last years.
