Pablo Picasso The Bathers

Angela Liu:

Walk around these sculptures and take a close look at them. They depict three people enjoying a day at the beach. There’s a man with clasped hands standing on a pier, a woman about to jump off a diving board, and a child swimming in the water. Can you tell which is which?

Picasso loved going to the beach. When he made these sculptures, he was living in the coastal city of Cannes. There was a beach just a few minutes away from his house, and he would spend time there with his family and friends.

The other interesting thing you may have noticed is the unusual material quality. While in Cannes, Picasso got to know the managers of junkyards and demolition companies. They would supply him with scraps of wood, which he would use for sculptural models. In these sculptures, he first used old picture frames and other discarded wood fragments. He then cast them in bronze, which is the version we are looking at here. And voilà, Picasso turned discarded refuse wood into carefree beachgoers, cast in sculptural bronze.

NARRATOR:

These three sculptures are titled The Bathers: Man with Clasped Hands, The Bathers: The Child, and The Bathers: Woman with Outstretched Arms. They are bronze sculptures crafted by Pablo Picasso in 1956.

The sculptures are deep brown in colour and made up of various geometric shapes that resemble different human figures. Respectively, they depict a man clasping his hands over his abdomen, a child with a large round head, and a woman with outstretched arms.

The tallest of the three is The Bathers: Man with Clasped Hands, standing approximately 214 centimetres tall, seventy-three centimetres long, and thirty-six centimetres wide — about the size of a door. This sculpture looks like a tall, slim man with clean, streamlined contours. His broad shoulders make his head appear much smaller, shaped like a vertical rectangle at the top. His neck is an elongated triangle, while his shoulders and chest form an inverted triangle. A long bronze sheet constitutes the rest of his body from chest to feet, excluding his shoulders, arms, and clasped hands, which form a narrow rectangular frame. Simple engravings outline the man’s eyes, nose, mouth, chest muscles, sternum, and abdominal muscles. Overall, the sculpture gives the impression of a man puffing out his chest to showcase his physique.

The Bathers: The Child is the smallest sculpture, measuring approximately 136 centimetres in height, sixty-seven centimetres in length, and forty-six centimetres in width, making it slightly taller than half a door. The sculpture consists of a round bronze sheet, which represents the child’s head, and a vertical, rectangular bronze strip depicting the child’s physique. On the head, smaller diamond-shaped pieces and a narrow bronze strip indicate the eyes and nose, while the top of the vertical, rectangular bronze strip overlaps with the face to create the shape of a mouth. At the middle of the child’s body, two thin bronze rods extend diagonally to the base, forming a triangle that evokes the idea of a child spreading their legs or peeking out of the water, revealing only their arms and upper body.

The third sculpture, The Bathers: Woman with Outstretched Arms, stands approximately 198 centimetres tall, 174 centimetres long, and forty-six centimetres wide. The woman’s head and body are represented by a long, vertical strip. Short grooves and a small dot on the woman’s head indicate her eyes, nose, and mouth. Her extremely thin arms stretch diagonally, with one hand higher than the other. Her palms are represented by bronze sheets with jagged outlines that suggest fingers. Behind the downward arm, a bronze sheet connects to the head and shoulder, forming a triangle that resembles long hair draped over the woman’s shoulder. Her chest is square-shaped and connects to a pair of rectangular legs. Her body and legs are carved with curved or parallel pitted lines that look like waves or wood grain.