The Street of Riera de Sant Joan from the Artist's Studio

The window as a resource for landscape views is a prominent feature in this work. Despite being a mere sketch in the lower right corner of the picture, it frames the scene characterised by the hustle and bustle of city life.
At the turn of the century, Picasso occupied a studio at 17 Riera de Sant Joan (a street no longer extant). He shared the space with Carles Casagemas who, belonging to a wealthy family, paid the rent. The studio consisted of an unfurnished room to which Picasso would return in 1903 during his Blue Period to paint another street scene, "Barcelona Nocturne" (private collection, Switzerland) and one of his key works of the same period, "La Vie" (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland), of which the museum has several sketches.
The atelier was a recurring motif in Picasso’s oeuvre, depicted both as a space for creation and as an observatory of life beyond its doors. Although in other such works, particularly those produced decades later at his La Californie studio, he would include elements that help identify his settings, those carried out in the studio on Riera de Sant Joan reveal that the space wasn’t considered a pictorial motif per se but rather a point of observation. The composition in this work is defined by the diagonal perspective provided by the street. While an identical view captured in a drawing is characterised by the ability of line to capture figures and buildings in great detail, in this oil painting line is replaced by colour. Vibrant, dynamic brushstrokes seem to convey the movement of street life as the figures are transformed into patches of colour and shapes are barely defined.
Mention should also be made of the contrast of light between the partial frame of the window and the rest of the scene, which unfolds in an atmosphere enhanced by the sketchy red figure in the lower left area, seen from the front, and by the sunlight projected on the upper parts of the buildings.