In the manner of Pablo Picasso
Spanish, 1881–1973
The Meeting, Nine Tiles, 2026
Oil on canvas
100 × 80 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.18.2
Moving, 16-second loop ·
Nine faces in nine tiles on a laptop screen, each broken into planes and looking in a slightly different direction. One has raised a hand. One has a grey bar across the mouth. Nobody is looking at anybody. Cubism showed one sitter from many viewpoints at once. The video meeting shows many sitters from one viewpoint, all of them hoping someone else will speak.
The brief
A grid of nine fragmented faces on a laptop screen, each face broken into planes, one with a hand raised, one muted. Analytical and synthetic Cubist oil painting, a figure or object fractured into overlapping geometric planes seen from several angles at once, muted ochres, greys and slate blues with passages of bold flat colour, heavy black contour lines, both eyes on one side of a face, collage-like flatness, chalky matte surface. Museum photograph of the oil painting, flat even lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
