Focus Collection 3: A Collage before Collage

Man Leaning against a Wall, a drawing that Picasso made in March 1899, when he was attending life classes at the Cercle Artístic de Barcelona, provides Fèlix Fanés with the starting point for a consideration of whether this work is or is not a collage —a technique generally regarded as dating in its modern form from 1912. Fanés takes us on a fascinating journey through the personal and social contexts in which the artist was moving in these fin-de-siècle years. His skilfully told narrative traces the origin of the picture card pasted onto the bottom right corner of the drawing and in passing portrays the new visuality of this period in which drawings and photographs vied for position in the large-circulation illustrated papers and magazines, the boom in the mass production of printed images, which inundated everyday life, and the vogue for collecting them that seized a large part of the population.

Design: Edicions de l'Eixample.