Picasso's " Bathers with a Toy Boat" (p. 61) of February 1937 is one of his key paintings during this profound time of crises." I am writing to you immediately to let you know that as from tonight I shall give up painting, sculpting, etching and poetry, and shall devote myself to singing instead." These were the words Picasso wrote to his old friend Jaime Sabartes, whom he knew from his days in Barcelona. Well, he did not sound the retreat. It was no more than an understandable but momentary phase of depression.
(This has a luxury rating, but in prices a pension is always one bracket lower than a hotel of similar rating.) Granada—Victoria (1-B); Parador San Francisco (as always, a parador is 1-B in prices but the place is superior in charm). Malaga—Belaire (1-A); Limonar (1-B). Palma—Principe Alfonso (1-A); Victoria (1-A). Both of these are directly on the sea. Places of 1-B rating include the big new Jaime I in the town.
The picture was painted on the same day that he received news of the death of his old friend Julio Gonzalez, a fellow sculptor who used to join him in many of his experiments in Boisgeloup. There are two ways in which suffering appears to be taken for granted in this painting: his grief over his friend's death and his despair of the times unite in a cheerless memento mori that could not have been formulated more desperately by any of the Christians of the Middle Ages.
Picasso's " Bathers with a Toy Boat" (p. 61) of February 1937 is one of his key paintings during this profound time of crises." I am writing to you immediately to let you know that as from tonight I shall give up painting, sculpting, etching and poetry, and shall devote myself to singing instead." These were the words Picasso wrote to his old friend Jaime Sabartes, whom he knew from his days in Barcelona. Well, he did not sound the retreat. It was no more than an understandable but momentary phase of depression.