Image: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
View source →The Reservoir, Horta de Sant Joan
Pablo Picasso, 1909
Technical Details
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
60.3 × 50.2 cm (23.7 × 19.8 in)
Style
Proto-Cubism
Decade
1900s
About This Work
Painted during Picasso's summer stay in Horta de Sant Joan, this landscape demonstrates the proto-Cubist fragmentation of architectural forms. The village buildings and water reservoir are broken into interlocking geometric planes of ochre, green, and grey. The work anticipates the full development of Analytic Cubism that would follow in 1910–1912.
Picasso spent the summer of 1909 in Horta de Sant Joan (then called Horta de Ebro) in Catalonia, where he had first visited in 1898. The village's geometric architecture — white cubic buildings on a hillside — proved ideal for his proto-Cubist experiments in breaking down form into geometric planes.
Current Location
Valuation & Provenance
2026 Estimated Value
Priceless / Not for sale
* Estimates are based on comparable auction results and market analysis. Not a formal appraisal.
Last Known Sale
No public auction record — held in permanent museum collection
Keywords
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