The Divan

"The Divan" portrays the nightlife of a young Picasso, spent in the taverns, café concerts and brothels of Barcelona at the turn of the century. In the centre of the scene the artist represented a prostitute with her client reclined on a settee and shielded by a table. The tension emanating from the composition is generated by the presence of a matchmaker (a frequent character in Picasso’s later works) watching all that took place in the house she ran.
Several of the features in this work enable us to relate it to other drawings produced during Picasso’s youth, and to others made before and after, all of which are characterised by the representation of an insinuated sexuality. On the one hand, the image of the matchmaker (a reference to the character in La Celestina) connects this work with the copy of one of Goya’s Caprichos and with other drawings made by Picasso in Madrid between 1897 and 1898. On the other, the representation of an erotic picture in the background enables us to identify the space as a brothel, similar to others in drawings made by the artist in Barcelona in 1902 and 1903, and in a number of sketches.
The Divan also evokes drawings of his friend Carles Casagemas and works executed in Paris by some of the most prominent artists of the period, such as the monotypes by Degas and the pictures of whores and bordellos by Toulouse-Lautrec. This is a charcoal drawing in which Picasso also used pastel and coloured pencils of earthy and yellowy colours. Thanks to the technique he applied to the paper support, which Picasso had learnt from Isidre Nonell, this and other works have a sort of patina that evokes the passage of time. Although the drawing is undated, its style that verges on the Expressionism of Nonell and Casagemas, the suggestive subject matter and the signature, «P. Ruiz Picasso», confirm that this is one of artist’s first erotic works.