92g Picasso Jasper – Shadow Studio

In occupied Paris in the early 1940s, Pablo Picasso was no longer allowed to exhibit anything, for the occupiers his art was considered “degenerate.” He stayed anyway and continued to work in his studio on Rue des Grands-Augustins, where he had painted Guernica in 1937. Time and again, skulls appear in the works from these years. He even created one as a sculpture: the Tête de mort, whose bronze now sits in the Musée National Picasso in Paris. Because the occupiers confiscated metal, helpers from the resistance secretly brought his plaster casts to the foundry at night. To his friend, the photographer Brassaï, Picasso confided that bones are always modeled and never merely carved out. One always gets the sense that they come from a mold, and still bear the traces of fingers in them. This dark earnest also lives in this skull. Across its ash-gray, slightly tinted ground run charcoal-black lines and patches. They do not flow in curves but start abruptly, breaking off and starting anew at other points. They appear restless yet deeply anchored, as if each of them has claimed its place in the stone forever. In between, bright lilac-white veins flash, and fine, rust-red lines run over the jaw and the row of teeth. This skull does not flatter; it admonishes. Somber, a little oppressive, and steadfastly calm, it stands for transience: a memento mori that knows how to assert itself therein. Picasso Jasper, despite its name, is not real jasper, but a fine-grained metamorphically imprinted calcite stone. Its dark drawing arose when manganese- and iron-containing solutions penetrated fine cracks and fissures in the rock and precipitated there. Because they follow these fracture lines, the lines run angular and abrupt rather than in soft curves. The rust-red on the jaw and teeth stems from iron oxide. Material: Picasso Jasper (trade name) – fine-grained, metamorphically imprinted calcite (calcite marble) with manganese- and iron-oxide drawing; not real jasper Origin: Utah, USA Dimensions: 5.0 x 3.6 x 3.3 cm Weight: 92 g Special features: ash-gray, lightly tinted ground with abruptly flowing charcoal-black lines and patches; bright lilac-tinged veins and finely banded lighter zones at the temple and skull cap; fine rust-red lines on the jaw and row of teeth

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