The Graphic Works Museum of San Clemente is going to exhibit from this Wednesday May 18 until August 28 the work ‘Case for two violins’, which is attributed to Pablo Ruiz Picasso. It is a loan from its owner, Marcos Salazar Ruiz, a renowned Venezuelan artist and resident of Toledo, who inherited it from his father and who in turn had acquired it between 1954 and 1955. The work has previously been exhibited at the Royal Superior Conservatory of Music of Madrid and at the San Clemente Cultural Center of the Toledo Provincial Council.
It is a collage that occupies the two halves of a case for two violins, representing a violinist (inside the cover of the case, made with newspaper clippings, corrugated cardboard, book covers and strokes of black paint) and the outline of two violins (cut out of a sheet of wood, painted with black, red and white strokes, and containing the author’s signature).
The two violins are made of pine wood on the front and poplar on the back; both unvarnished and with the obverse painted. Picasso used these types of woods in various sculptures, such as a ‘Still Life’ made in 1914.
The figure of the violinist is made up of pieces of corrugated cardboard and several fragments of publications: a section of ‘Le Petit Journal’, published on January 14, 1893, which would correspond to a part of the torso; a fragment of the cover of the ‘Historias de Ruiz de Alarcón’, published in 1914, which was placed with the reverse facing up and on which one of the violinist’s hands is drawn; and several fragments of the cover of ‘Zizi. Story of a Paris sparrow’, dated 1892, which make up parts of the face and the cuff of one of the sleeves.
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