Pablo Picasso
b. 1881, Málaga, Spain; d. 1973, Mougins, France
Le Moulin de la Galette, Paris, ca. November 1900
Oil on canvas
On the eve of his nineteenth birthday, Picasso arrived in Paris at the time of the Exposition Universelle in October 1900. The spectacles of the modern city captivated him, but it was the celebrated Montmartre dance hall that inspired Le Moulin de la Galette, one of Picasso's first paintings in Paris. The Catalan painter Ramón Casas (who briefly lived above Le Moulin de la Galette and Frenchmen Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, among others, had earlier memorialized the site through paintings likely known to Picasso. The young Spanish artist followed suit, focusing his lens on the disparate patrons emerging from the shadows. From the trio of bourgeois spectators elevated at left, to the intimate pair seated at the table and the assembling of ornamented dancers, which most likely includes sex workers, Picasso presents his own tableau of modern life. While Picasso would return to Barcelona by that Christmas, Paris left a strong impression; the artist would eventually settle there in 1904.
