Raymond Spiteri

In 1927, Christian Zervos, the editor of the prominent art magazine Cahiers d’Art, published an article on the “Dernières œuvres de Picasso.” This article discussed the new direction in Pablo Picasso’s recent body of surrealist-influenced paintings: unlike the restrained compositions of the postwar rappel à ordre, these paintings demonstrated a new expressive dynamism, and signaled Picasso’s openness to novel, disruptive currents in the cultural life of les années folles. For Zervos, this body of work exemplified the path forward for contemporary painting in the wake of cubism, a return to a more expressive pictorial form—a tendency sometimes described as a type of néo-fauvisme. However, this path was not without peril, and one goal of the article was to acknowledge Picasso’s recent accomplishments. To this end, Zervos recounted a recent conversation with Picasso to question the artistic direction of the emerging generation of painters: Whatever anyone may say, Picasso never seeks to express literary or metaphysical ideas in his painting. It is enough for him to create works with plastic form, persuaded that a work with perfect plastic form contains all the suggestions of the mind. Several days ago, at a picture dealer on the left bank, Picasso had just seen canvases by artists of the so-called avant-garde. As we were talking, Picasso said to me: “Truly, it wasn’t worth all the efforts our generation made just to see these fellows fall back into literature and forget the most elementary plastic form [ la plastique la plus élémentaire].”