.jpg "Absinthe by Pablo Picasso - Genre Paintings from Hermitage Museum")
Painting Detail
Absinthe (Girl in a Cafe)Artist: Pablo Picasso
Medium: Painting, Charcoal, pastel, gouache and white chalk, 65x50 cm
Date: 1901
Genre: Genre Painting
Source: Formerly in the collection of Otto Krebs, Holzdorf
The pastel is one of Picasso's early compositions in his Absinthe series. The woman is totally immersed in her thoughts, as suggested by the gesture of her fingers at her chin. Here the artist showing a woman at a table adds several narrative elements. He shows dancing couples - a scene which undoubtedly has a symbolic meaning. Their indefinite forms in the yellow electric light may be no more than the lone woman's dream of the joys of life.