“La fábrica de Horta d’Ebre”

“La fábrica de Horta d’Ebre” is an oil on canvas painted by Pablo Picasso in 1909; it belongs to the Hermitage Museum Collection.

The painting can be adscribed to the early stages of the cubist movement. An artist movement developed between 1907 and 1914 in Paris by Pablo Picasso and George Braque.

The beginning of the 20^th century and the cubist movement marked a revolutionary break with the European tradition.“La fábrica de Horta d’Ebre” is also a landscape like “La Nevada” or “Le gare Saint-Lazare”, but it shows a very different point of view.

The factory and the adjoining houses are depicted from different perspectives. There isn´t an unique perspective, there are several. It shows also the cubist taste for geometry: the shapes of the factory and the houses are broken down into basic forms such as cubes, even the sky and trees show clear lines.

The array of colours is limited, the prevailing colours are  the grey and ochre of buildings and land.

“La fábrica de Horta d’Ebre” is a brilliant example of the break with naturalism; break that will be more deeply developed in subsequent artworks so that objects become unrecognizable.

From my point of view, this painting has a great value: It not only has been painted by one of the greatest artist of all time but also marks the beginning of a new artistic period. Cubism was a major milestone in art history and this painting embodies the main characteristic of this art movement: multiple point of view, break with naturalism and taste for geometry.