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Spanish
Painter and Sculptor, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) often left visual
clues on the surfaces of his paintings to suggest a hidden image
underneath, as on
The Tragedy
of 1903. Artists frequently make changes to a painting or reuse a canvas
or panel with an image already painted on it. Often the supports are
reworked because an artist cannot afford to purchase new materials. An
artist also may scrape off an earlier painting and start again or
occasionally cover an abandoned image with a uniform coat of ground.
Picasso did this very rarely. When he reworked his paintings, he most
often did so directly over earlier images, neither using a "clean" side
nor obliterating the abandoned attempt. Early in his career, financial
constraints were certainly part of his motivation for reusing supports,
but Picasso reworked paintings throughout his lifetime. His reworking
was not done because he was frugal, but for Picasso the initial subject,
the shape or form on the canvas, often revealed itself in a different
guise as he worked on or returned to a picture, and it served as a new
inspiration. |
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