In 1989, before this work was to be exhibited in a show at the Dallas Museum of Art, it was examined by a conservator at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth. She discovered that this painting had been executed over another Cubist painting Picasso had done earlier. X-ray devices used by conservators can often tell us if artists have painted on top of previously painted works. Additional Information Cubism is a form of abstraction in which objects are broken up into angular facets and these facets are then methodically arranged into a composition. Cubism presents objects to the viewer as if they are being seen from a number of different angles all at the same time.
Cubist paintings are organizations of shapes and colors, sometimes in large, flat areas.
Shapes seem to fit together like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. Picasso and Georges Braque collaborated so closely for a time on works using this particular type of organization that one may have difficulty telling their work apart. Picasso and Braque sometimes glued paper to the surfaces of their canvases. One can see pieces of newspaper, tobacco wrappers, playing cards, and wallpaper that have been glued into place as parts of the painting. Works that include materials other than paper glued to the surface are called collages.