Art Eyewitness Book Review: Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast

 

Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast

By Marie-Sophie Carron de la Carrière

Thames & Hudson/272pages/$65

Reviewed by Ed Voves

How have the mighty fallen! 

These familiar words supply the refrain for one of the most time-honored topics in literature and history - the rise and fall of daring, high-stakes risk takers. 

From the ancient Greeks, with their concepts of hubris and nemesis, to "rich today, broke tomorrow" financial magnates, stories of those who defy the odds - and the "gods" - are fascinating and unnerving. Life can be very, very unkind to most people at some point in their lives, but especially so to those with the ambition to gamble everything for fame, power and riches.

Paul Poiret (1879-1944) was the protagonist in such a cautionary tale. Poiret chose to roll the dice of fate in the competition between haute couture fashion houses rather than on an actual battlefield. But the end result for Poiret le Magnifique was the same as for Napoleon at Waterloo.

Unknown photographer, Portrait of Paul Poiret, c. 1913

Poiret was the subject of a recent exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, June 2025 to January 2026. It was the biggest art show dedicated to Poiret since the celebrated Met Gala exhibit of 2007. Over five hundred dresses, evening gowns, coats, fashion accessories and works of art were displayed. The majority of these were donated to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs by Poiret's wife.

There are, sadly, no plans to bring a version of Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast to the U.S. museums. Thanks to Thames & Hudson, the companion book to the exhibition will keep fashion enthusiasts from rending their garments in despair. Even by T&H's exalted standards, this volume is a brilliant integration of beautiful full-page views of Poiret fashions, vintage photographs and cogent analysis.

Page spread from Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast, published by     

Thames & Hudson, showing Poiret's Mosaique Evening Gown, c. 1910

Special strong points of the T&H book are the extraordinary fidelity to color tones - Poiret loved vivid hues, especially green (above) - and the close-up details of dress ensembles such as the hand-embroidered silk crepe designs on the 1911 Flammes Shawl and Culotte-dress.

Page spread from Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast, showing Poiret's Flammes Shawl and Culotte-dress 1911

With such a dazzling repertoire, it is not hard to understand why Poiret rose to be the "King of Fashion." Rather more puzzling is how he toppled from his throne.

This begs the question, which the book's lead author, Marie-Sophie Carron de la Carrière, raises.

Who are you, Paul Poiret?

Paul Poiret was born in 1879 to a Parisian family engaged in the fabric trade. Such a background in fashion was hardly extraordinary. Poiret's sisters became successful designers, as well. But Poiret was not content with merely expanding the family business or working in concert with talented siblings. From the start, he had visions of la Grande Couture Française, with himself as its champion.

While still in his twenties, Poiret began selling designs to leading fashion "houses" in Paris. In 1898, after being hired by the firm of Jacques Doucet, one of Poiret's designs, for a theatrical costume used by the actress Rejane in the popular play Zaza, earned him widespread accolades.

After a mandatory year's service in the French Army, Poiret joined the celebrated House of Worth in 1901. What should have been a dream job lasted but a short interval. Like the "wild beast" painters, Matisse and Derain, Poiret wanted to redirect French fashion along unconventional paths. 

In 1903, Poiret opened his own fashion house, with designs emphasizing comfortable, body-configuring lines. In a series of radical moves, Poiret discarded rustling petticoats and the constricting corset which had held women in a tight-grip of stylish discomfort for decades.

Like most great cultural figures, Poiret was a man of contradictions. He boasted about liberating the bodies of women from corsets but claimed credit for introducing the leg-hugging "hobble" skirt, with a hem so-tight that it made walking nearly impossible. The original inspiration, incredibly enough, was to design a skirt to enable women to fit into the cockpit of an airplane.

Most of Poiret's other designs were comfortable, ravishingly beautiful - and highly priced. Cost-cutting was never an option for Poiret. The ultimate expression of his taste for rare, expensive materials and exquisite, painstaking stitchery is worth noting here, though it came late in his career.

 Paul Poiret, Marrekech Evening Gown, 1924

The shimmering Marrekech Evening Gown, dating to 1924, featured silver strip embroidery done in the Tsel stitching technique from the Berber people of Morocco. At the hem, Poiret affixed a wide band of chinchilla fur. The South American animals whose pelts provided the fur had been hunted almost to extinction until a 1910 protective treaty preserved the species. This saved the furry rodents but sent the prices of available fur soaring. 

Expense was no concern to Poiret. Chinchilla fur was added to the bottom of the gown, making it a symbol of luxury for the sake of luxury!

Poiret in a remarkably short interval after opening his "house" became France's leading fashion designer. But he did not succeed through high-priced gimmicks. His clothes were striking to behold and - hobble skirts aside - comfortable to wear. 

What today we would call the Poiret "brand" evolved into a mindset focused on grace and beauty, a life-enhancing experience that buyers brought home with the stunning garments they purchased at his shop.

Two of Poiret's creations from his pre-World War I heyday speak for the glittering fashion array which was displayed at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and now appear on the pages of the companion book published by T&H.

The Evening Coat, from 1910, was made of a material known as gros de Tours, with brocade design in gold and silver strips, trimmed in fur at the collar, shoulders and wrists and fastened at the waist by six ingeniously-placed silver buttons. Elegant and sensual, the coat also kept the woman who wore it warm on cold, damp winter evenings in Paris.

Paul Poiret, Evening Coat, 1910

If the 1910 Evening Coat was a masterpiece, so was 1912 Melodie Dress. Poiret's focus with the Melodie Dress was on a more natural, organic state of elegance.

At first glance, with its triangular pinafore, made of silk velvet, and side pocket, the Melodie Dress almost looks like a work tunic or leisure attire. But this apparent simplicity could not disguise its "groundbreaking silhouette that is both straight and flowing," to quote Marie-Pierre Ribere, one of the curators from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. It was a revolutionary moment in fashion design.

Paul Poiret, Melodie Dress, 1912

Two years after introducing the Melodie Dress, Poiret was involved in designing truly functional garments. These were uniforms and overcoats for the French Army engaged in World War I. Poiret served in the army and there are photos of him, looking like a battle-hardened poilu. Though he did not fight in the trenches, the war left its mark on him. The glittering, glamorous world before the war was gone forever.

Poiret was not ready in 1919 to move-on, emotionally, from the pre-1914 milieu which he had dominated. He was not alone. Jean Cocteau, who knew Poiret well, wrote an influential essay, Le Rappel à l’ordre: discipline et liberté, calling for a return to classicism in all forms of cultural expression.

Poiret was only too willing to oblige. Too willing, if fact. Thus began his decline and fall as France's "king" of fashion.

Thérese Bonney, Paul Poiret and the model Rénee, 1927

As Poiret struggled to maintain his supremacy during the aftermath of the "Great War", he created fashion designs of unsurpassed beauty. Of those which appeared in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs exhibition, none exemplifies Poiret's post-war efforts better than the Martinique Dress of 1922.

This reinterpretation of the kimono, made of crepe-marocain and printed crepe de chine, was truly of a work of art. However, women in the 1920's, especially young women, increasingly valued dresses that made them feel vital, alive and sexy - not just look beautiful.

Paul Poiret, Martinique Dress, 1922

For all of its breathtaking allure, Poiret's Martinique Dress would not become the signature fashion design of the 1920's. That honor belongs to Coco Chanel's "Little Black Dress" - in its various incarnations. I saw one of these "flapper" dresses in the 2017 Jazz Age exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt. Even on a mannequin, Chanel's evening dress was the show-stopper of the exhibition.

The success of the"Little Black Dress" has helped to create the myth that the House of Chanel was built on the ruins of the House of Poiret. This is only partly correct, as revealed by several 1920's Poiret dresses in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When directly contrasted with the Chanel evening dress from the Cooper Hewitt show, Poiret's "Arrow of Gold" (1925) more than holds its own in terms of lithe, sultry elegance.

Ed Voves, Photo (2017) Chanel's 1926 Evening Dress & Underslip; Poiret's "Arrow of Gold" Dress, 1925, Metropolitan Museum collection

Earlier, I commented how Poiret, in the pre-World War I era, created fashion designs which exuded a "life-enhancing experience that buyers brought home with the stunning garments they purchased at his shop." This is exactly what Chanel did in the 1920's. But there was an added bonus to Chanel's achievement - she was a stylish, savvy, independent woman who managed to make a success of her own bold endeavor.

To women in the 1920's, finally able to vote and with memories of their vital contributions to the war effort, Chanel was a major role model. Poiret might match Chanel's fashion designs, but how could he, a giant from an earlier epoch, respond to her appeal to the "new" woman of the Jazz Age?

The tragedy of Poiret's fall from grace was that he was wed to a beautiful, talented woman who could have helped him recreate the House of Poiret in the changed circumstances of the 1920's. In 1905, Poiret married Denise Boulet (1886-1982). It was a love match and, for many years, a successful marriage, though saddened by the death of two of their children during the war years.

 Denise Poiret wearing the Melodie Dress by Paul Poiret, 1913

Denise Poiret was her husband's best model. Poiret's fashions never looked better than when Denise wore them. She accompanied him on his tours throughout Europe and to the U.S. Audiences, especially Americans, were fascinated by the winning combination of Denise's devotion to her husband and her mysterious allure.

As far as the business-end of the House of Poiret, that was as far as it went. Poiret spent staggering amounts of revenue during the 1920's to reverse the dwindling fortunes of his business. At the same time, he ignored the public cachet and abundant talent of his wife. Instead, he treated Denise, in one case literally, like an exotic bird in a gilded cage.

Why did Poiret marginalize his wife, rather than give her a proactive role? Poiret admired Coco Chanel. He was the first to believe in Elsa Schiaparelli's fashion sense and mentored her during the early years of her career. Yet, he failed to capitalize on the many gifts of his own wife or give her scope for creative endeavor.

In 1928, Denise Poiret, worn-out by her husband's increasingly abusive behavior and, sad to relate, infidelity, sued for divorce. Fate, waiting in the wings, turned its full fury on Poiret. First bankruptcy and then everything fell apart. By the time he died in 1944, Poiret was destitute, living in his sister's apartment in Paris, a vanquished hero from a bygone age ...

... but not a forgotten genius. Elsa Schiaparelli, who paid for his burial expenses, called Poiret the "Leonardo of Fashion." So will you, after even a brief look at the wonderful T&H book, Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved.

Introductory image:

Cover art of Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast by Marie-Sophie Carron de la Carrière, 2026. Courtesy of Thames & Hudson

Unknown photographer. Portrait of Paul Poiret, facing left, c. 1913. Library of Congress collection: LC-USZ62-100840 (b&w film copy neg.) photographic print.

Page spread from Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast, showing Poiret's  Mosaique Evening Gown, c. 1910. Collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Courtesy of Thames & Hudson

Page spread from Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast, showing Poiret's Flammes Shawl and Culotte-dress, 1911. Collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Courtesy of Thames & Hudson

Paul Poiret (1879-1944) Marrekech Evening Gown, 1924. Collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Paul Poiret (1879-1944) Evening Coat, 1910. Collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Paul Poiret (1879-1944) Melodie Dress, 1912. Collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Thérese Bonney (1894-1978) Paul Poiret and the model Rénee at his fashion house at 1 rond-point de Champs-Elysées, 1927. Gelatin silver bromide print. From the negative by l’ARCP. Paris. © Bibliotheque de la ville de Paris

Paul Poiret (1879-1944) Martinique Dress of 1922. Collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Ed Voves, Photo (2017) Coco Chanel's Evening Dress and Underslip, 1926, from the Kent state University Libraries, Borowitz collection; Paul Poiret's "Arrow of Gold" Dress, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection.  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Arrow_of_Gold%22_MET_DP145111.jpg

Unknown photographer. Denise Poiret wearing the Melodie Dress by Paul Poiret, 1913. Gelatin silver bromide print. Paris. Bibliotheque national de France. Prints and Photography department, inv. OA-702-FOL

Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change at the Barnes Foundation

Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change

 

Barnes Foundation - February 21– May 9, 2016

Columbus Museum of Art - June 10 – September 11, 2016

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The First World War entered its first full year in January 1915. Gone was the nearly universal belief of August 1914 that the war would be a short and glorious campaign.

To mark the occasion of the grim New Year of 1915, the French Minister of War, Alexandre Millerand, declared, "There are no more workers' rights, no more social laws. There is nothing now but war."

A world defined by mass, industrialized slaughter was the setting for Pablo Picasso's Great War years. The decade between 1914 to 1924 witnessed a career-changing shift from Picasso's "periods" and his dedicated allegiance to Cubism toward a restless, multi-faceted approach to art that would continue for the rest of his life.      

Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change brilliantly explores this time of transformation in Picasso's art. This major exhibit is now on view at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. It will appear at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio later in June 2016.

One of the signature works in the Picasso: The Great War exhibit is a star of the Columbus Museum's collection. This is Still Life with Compote and Glass,1914–15, which Picasso painted around the time of Alexandre Millerand's "nothing now but war" chant. 

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Compote and Glass, 1914–15

Still Life with Compote and Glass represents the apogee of pre-World War I Cubism. It combines the major elements of the two phases of Cubism. Here we can see the interlocking of geometric planes of Analytical Cubism combined with the enhanced use of color and concrete imagery in Synthetic Cubism. The contribution to Cubism of Picasso's Spanish countryman, Juan Gris, is apparent in the representational tone of this work. Still Life with Compote and Glass shows how Cubism would likely have developed had Europe not plunged into war in August 1914.

Europe did go mad and Picasso could only paint Still Life with Compote and Glass because he was a Spanish neutral. He did not have to dodge bullets and shrapnel like his Cubist compatriot, Georges Braques, who was seriously wounded in 1915. 

Picasso later defended his greatest work, Guernica, declaring that painting "is an instrument of war against brutality and darkness."

The art works presented in the Picasso: The Great War exhibit may not be overtly anti-war like Guernica. But the masterpieces on view at the Barnes certainly attest to Picasso's creative and compassionate response to Millerand's "nothing now but war" proclamation.

Cubism joined the casualty list of the Great War, seriously wounded if not killed. The Barnes exhibit includes a provocative short film which explores how the French government during World War I viewed Cubism as subversive and unpatriotic. 

This bizarre theory was based, at least superficially, on the fact that German art enthusiasts were among the first to embrace Cubism. The German-born Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884-1979) was the art agent for both Picasso and Braques. Kahnweiler's Paris gallery, located at 28 rue Vignon, became a rallying point for avant garde artists like Picasso, whom the German art dealer loyally supported.

In August 1914, Kahnweiler had to flee to Switzerland and his stock of paintings was seized by the French government. At the same time, German authorities impounded a collection of Matisse's paintings owned by the Stein family which was part of an art exhibit in Berlin. The Steins, even though the U.S. was not yet in the war, had to sell their paintings at a loss to a Danish collector. Kahnweiler's art was auctioned by the French to support the "nothing now but war" effort.

The "Great" War was a war on art. Cubism and all other forms of independent thought and expression were thrown into the furnace of militarism. But Picasso, the Spanish non-combatant, could resist this mindless, soul-consuming tyranny - and he did.

Picasso retained Cubism as the dominant style of his painting during the early war years. His greatest work during 1915 was the Harlequin so admired by Henri Matisse and now on display at the Museum of Modern Art. Yet Picasso, like so many great artists, admired the portrait sketches of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). In 1915, Picasso began doing a series of portrait sketches of fellow artists like his friend Max Jacob, some of which are on view in the Barnes Foundation exhibit.

Pablo Picasso, Olga Picasso, Seated, 1918

  

It is no exaggeration to say that the exquisite portrait sketch of Olga Picasso, created in 1918, bears a comparison with those of Ingres from a century before. This work is such an astonishing demonstration of the ideals of classical composition that a passing glance might well mislead a viewer to think that the drawing was from the hand of the French nineteenth century master rather than the Spanish modernist.

The real significance of Picasso's "rediscovery" of Ingres lies in the 1915 date of his first efforts like the portrait of Max Jacob. Picasso returned to classicism in 1915 before the controversial debut of Les demoiselles d'Avignon at the 1916 exhibition organized by André Salmon,  before he ventured to Italy in 1917, before the famous "call to order" by Jean Cocteau in 1918.

All of these events have figured prominently in accounts of Picasso's return to realism from Cubism.The Picasso: The Great War exhibit shows that Picasso never entirely abandoned Cubism nor did he completely embrace classicism.

The Barnes Foundation, Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation & Change, 2016 

On view in the exhibit is a major Cubist work from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Harlequin with Violin (Si Tu Veux), painted in 1918. Displayed next to it is a realist depiction of the other mainstay of the Commedia della’arte, Pierrot. This too was painted in 1918.  

To underscore Picasso's ability to engage in seemingly contradictory forms of art, the exhibit curators positioned another Cubist work, a portrait of the celebrated Spanish dancer, Blaquita Suarez (1917), to the right of Pierrot.

Interestingly, the piece of sheet music held by the Cubist Harlequin with Violin is entitled Si Tu Veux or If You Like. It is hard to resist the conclusion that Picasso was including the viewer in an open secret: he, Picasso, painted the way he wanted to, when he wanted to, because he was Picasso.

Another significant work on display in Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change is Studies, dating to 1920.  Life-like oil sketches of a head and hands share the canvas with Cubist still-life studies. It is an ensemble effort, with Picasso preparing for a future work before he had decided upon the style he wanted to paint.

Pablo Picasso, Studies, 1920

If there was a motivating factor for Picasso's embrace of classicism - beyond his own creative impulses - it was his friendship with the poet, artist and film producer, Jean Cocteau (1889-1963). Cocteau introduced Picasso to the ballet impresario, Serge Diaghilev, and in 1917, Picasso traveled to Italy to collaborate on a modern ballet called Parade.

Parade was a meeting of minds and work of genius. The script was written by Cocteau, the music by Erik Satie, the choreography by Leonide Massine and the stage curtain and costumes designed by Picasso.  Misia Sert, the queen of Paris society and Diaghilev's muse, provided the money. Parade debuted at a benefit performance for wounded Allied soldiers on May 18, 1917.

The premier of Parade became the stuff of legend. The opening was more of a "Friday night fight" than a cultural event. It was greeted by jeers on one side and cheers on the other. Cocteau and Satie commenced an ugly quarrel with a hostile dance critic that landed Satie in jail and left Cocteau nursing bruises from a police baton. Picasso, at least initially, emerged unscathed, marrying one of the ballerinas, Olga Khokhlova.

The Barnes Foundation, Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation & Change, 2016  

Echoes of the mythic events surrounding Parade are very evident in the galleries of the Barnes Foundation. Large format photos of Picasso with the team of painters who assisted him and of the finished stage curtain are powerful reminders of the labor involved and the scale of this storied production. 

Picasso's continuing fascination with Cubism is evident in the reconstructions of several of the costumes from Parade. One costume, that of the Chinese Conjuror, is an actual survivor from the original ballet.

Pablo Picasso, Costume for the Chinese Conjuror from Parade, 1917

The romance with Olga Khokhlova, begun during Parade, certainly propelled Picasso along the path of classicism for the remainder of the war years and into the early 1920's.
 It was a measure of Picasso's idea of the woman he set out to marry that he produced such an amazing portfolio of portraits of Olga. Given his infamous remark that women were either goddesses or doormats, I think the 36-year old Picasso had set his heart on a goddess. Olga Khokhlova looked, acted and indeed possessed the virtuous and strong-minded character to fit the role. 

The courtship and early married life of Picasso and Olga Khokhlova was an attempt to transform the ideal into reality. If their marriage ended in disaster, it produced some of the most beautiful portraits of a woman created during the twentieth century. It also inspired a remarkable series of works evoking the primal, nurturing female principle. Only Picasso could have  achieved this creative triumph - even as his marriage was headed toward the rapids.

Pablo Picasso, Olga Khokhlova with a Mantilla, 1917

Picasso painted Olga Khokhlova in a Mantilla in 1917 and presented it to his mother, Doña María. It is a beautiful, haunting work, a tribute to the great Spanish portrait masters, Velasquez and Goya. It says something about the ironclad formalities of Spanish society that Picasso created this magnificent work to please his mother, rather than his bride-to-be.

Picasso married Olga Khokhlova in 1918 and their son, Paolo, was born in 1921. During these sunny years of their marriage, Picasso painted some of the most extraordinary evocations of motherhood ever created. The Barnes exhibit has one of these on view, albeit without a child in the mother's arms, as is usually the case with these distinctive works.

The large, nurturing "earth mother" is not conventionally beautiful, certainly not by 1920's standards. Instead Picasso's "mothers" radiate strength and love, and, in this case, are marked by anxiety for their children's welfare. 

Pablo Picasso, Seated Woman, 1920

Picasso, in fact, created images of motherhood in the way that very young children experience their mothers. Children see and depend upon their mothers as the providers of unstinting, unquestioning love. Mothers are the arms that hold, the hands that caress, the faces that reassure.

After the horror of the trench warfare of World War I, society in Europe and America craved the "normalcy" of tradition, a "return to order" as Cocteau proclaimed. And the survivors of the Great War yearned for the kind of nurturing that Picasso depicted with his "earthbound" maternal angels. That state of desperate desire is where the superb exhibit at the Barnes Foundation concludes.

For Picasso and his world, however, there would be no lasting "return to order." Picasso's marriage foundered. Yet, he would not agree to a divorce that would cost him half his property. Olga Picasso lingered, married but unloved, until she died in 1955. Picasso, tormented by his inner demons, came to see himself like the fabled Minotaur of antiquity, half-man, half-beast.

And then war came again, in 1936. This time armed conflict shattered Picasso's beloved Spain. Bombs rained down upon a vulnerable, undefended city called Guernica. Pablo Picasso took up his paint brush and once more matched his awesome talent and creative vision against the forces of brutality and darkness, in a world reduced again to "nothing now but war."      

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images courtesy of the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia 

Introductory Image: 
Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Harlequin Musician, 1924. Oil on canvas, 51 3/16 × 38 1/4 in. (130 × 97.2 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Given in loving memory of her husband, Taft Schreiber, by Rita Schreiber, 1989.31.2 © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 - 1973). Still Life with Compote and Glass, 1914–15. Oil on canvas, 25 x 31". 1931.087. Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH. © 2013 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York | Gift of Ferdinand Howald
Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Olga Picasso, Seated, autumn 1918. Pencil on paper, 14 3/8 × 10 13/16 in. (36.5 × 27.5 cm). Private collection Courtesy, Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte Photo: Marc Domage © FABA © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Installation of Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change, 2016. #11 Image © 2016 The Barnes Foundation

Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Studies, 1920. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 31 7/8 in. (100 x 81 cm). MP65. Musée Picasso, Paris, France. © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso /  Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY / René-Gabriel Ojéda

Installation of Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change, 2016. #10 Image © 2016 The Barnes Foundation

Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Costume for the Chinese Conjuror from Parade, 1917. Silk satin fabric with silver tissue, 65 5/16 × 59 1/16 × 19 11/16 in. (176 × 150 × 50 cm). Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Museum no. S.84&A&B-1985 Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum, London © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Olga Khokhlova with a Mantilla, Barcelona, summer–autumn 1917. Oil on canvas, 25 3/16 × 20 7/8 in. (64 × 53 cm). Private collection. Courtesy Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte. Photo: Gasull © FABA© 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Seated Woman, 1920. Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 × 25 9/16 in. (92 × 65 cm). Musée Picasso, Paris, MP67 Photo: J.G. Berizzi. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York