The Offering

In 1907, "Les Demoiselles d’Avignon" (Museum of Modern Art, New York) signalled the beginning of a period of reflection on volume, rhythm, the simplification of forms and the pictorial expression of space in Picasso’s oeuvre, a clear rejection of illusionism. The discovery of African art produced an immediate effect on the artist’s works, for its harmony, monumental character and pure forms afforded him artistic solutions that overcame the archaism and distortions he had taken from Iberian statuary.
However, the reflection on the representation of space and analysis of forms would be emphasised in Picasso’s production when he rediscovered Cézanne’s works, on display at the Bernheim- Jeune gallery and at his retrospective at the Salon d’Automne of 1907. At the end of that year and throughout 1908 Picasso painted deliberately sketchy, primitive figures that reflected and synthesised both influences: "Friendship", "Three Women" (both in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) and "The Offering" are his response to Cézanne’s late works, and reveal his masterful sculptural conception of bodies and their spatial relationships. In this sequence, the analysis of the destruction of illusionism and the creation of depth by the geometrisation of the figures is taken to the extreme in "The Offering".
he choice of theme in this gouache stemmed from a private incident. To celebrate his reconciliation with Fernande Olivier, Picasso reworked the scene of a 1904 watercolour that included a self-portrait of the artist beholding his female companion, reclining on a bed. The Offering depicts a recumbent woman contemplated by two men, one of whom lifts up the sheet and offers her a bouquet. The verticality and structure of the figures evoke the sculpture of Africa and Oceania, while the exploration of space and the articulation of volumes are based on the analysis of the few erotic paintings by Cézanne. In one of the preparatory sketches held by the Musée Picasso in Paris, a handwritten note in Spanish describes the plot of the scene, «She’s reclining on a bed and he / discovers her by raising the sheet behind the bed hangings / and curtains, holding / a bunch of flowers in / his hand».