During the time when Glass of Absinthe will feature in the Picasso-Rodin exhibition at the Musée national Picasso-Paris (9th February 2021 – 20th February 2022), Museo Picasso Málaga will be home to Glass, Newspaper and Dice, in one of its rooms devoted to cubism. The innovation that cubism presented in terms of alternative ways of depicting objects, had its equivalent in sculpture. Cubism encouraged a radical questioning of the conventional rules of sculptural practice. In Pablo Picasso’s case, particularly between 1909 and 1914, this led to hybrid works in which painting enhanced sculpture’s status as an image.

This is the case with the guest work Glass, Newspaper and Dice, currently on display at Museo Picasso Málaga. This small relief painting was made by turning a cigar box into the background and frame, and using pieces of cut-out, overpainted metal from a tin of powdered milk and some pieces of wood. The use of the pigment and the colour scheme serve to heighten the sense of a “sculptural” construction, which also functions as a picture, and accentuates the trompe l’oeil effect that highlights or diminishes the relief, which is emphasized by the piece of tin protruding from the frame.

In 1914 Picasso also made seven different versions of Glass of Absinthe. This cubist sculpture is unusual in that it appears to be a synthesis of his output from this period. This is because, although it was modelled in plaster and cast in bronze in the traditional manner, it also incorporates a real object - a spoon - and retains the cubist fragmentation of planes.

Currently, three of these Glasses are to be found in the United States, at The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Another two are in Europe, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at the Berggruen Museum in Berlin. The only Glass of Absinthe that Picasso kept belongs to the Fundación Almine y Bernard Picasso (FABA). It has been shown at major international exhibitions and is currently part of Museo Picasso Málaga’s permanent collection, “Dialogues with Picasso. Collection 2020-2023”.

To coincide with this art loan exchange, Museo Picasso Málaga has carried out research on the guest work. It can be seen online at: https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/en/collection/cubism-still-lifes-0-