Artwork of the week: The Shadow

The shadow (1953) shows a man against the light, standing out against a background of paintings, similar to several windows that seem to show a landscape outside.  The shadow of the subject is located halfway between the painter, the painted pictures, his own studio and the outside.

The mistaken and ambiguous shadow has received different interpretations. On the one hand, for Paloma Esteban, it is a reflection on the artist's own identity and his position in the face of the political and artistic challenges of the time. This piece was made precisely the same year of Stalin's death, 1953, an event that aroused certain contradictions in Picasso and other intellectuals linked to the Communist Party. The artist, who participated in organizations and events supported by the Communist Party, was at the same time criticized for his formal choices by party leaders, such as the commemorative portrait of Stalin.

The shadow also speaks of absences, as Michel Leiris interpreted it, "a non-verbal but visual diary of a detestable 'season in hell,' a crisis of intimate life."

But this silhouette also stands in the way of the contemplation of the work and, as Nathalie Leleu recalls, it is not the first time: its cropped and transformed profile was already present in the versions of the painter and his model between 1928 and 1929. In this case it is the shadow of the artist, outside the painting, that is printed on the canvas, like a camera obscura, an optical camera. The door in which this projected figure is framed signals to us the transit between the space we inhabit and the one created by the painting.

Sources:

Esteban, Paloma (presentación), Los grandes genios del arte contemporáneo. No. 1. El siglo XX. Picasso 1881-1914, 2004

Nathalie Leleu, “Pablo Picasso, L’Ombre, Vallauris, 29 décembre 1953.”, Apuntes sobre la obra, Musée national Picasso Paris (https://www.museepicassoparis.fr/en/collection-enligne#/artwork/160000000000694filters=query%3Al%27ombre&page=1&layout=grid&sort=by_author&note=13087)