Description of the picture:
Family of comedians – Pablo Picasso. 1905. Oil on canvas. 212.8×229.6
“Family of comedians” belongs to the so-called pink period of Picasso’s work, which replaced the sad “blue period”. The artist became interested in images from the world of theater and the circus, pink-golden, reddish and pink-gray tones appeared in his palette, and the characters of the paintings were vagrant artists – clowns, dancers, jugglers and acrobats from the Medrano circus, where the painter often visited and painted his friends .
The figures of comedians the author placed in a deserted landscape devoid of vegetation against a blue sky covered with clouds. On the left – similar to Picasso himself Harlequin, who holds the girl’s hand, next to them is the director of the troupe – a fat man dressed in a red leotard and a jester’s cap, on the right are two young acrobats. The whole composition is balanced by the lonely figure of a seated girl in the foreground. The characters are static, there is no inner affinity between them. And although they are together, but everyone is chained by the cold of inner loneliness. The circus performers froze, as if waiting for some command or order to move on. Most of the works of Picasso “pink period” is imbued with the spirit of tragic loneliness and destitution."