Бутылка, бокал, вилка

This still life depicts a variety of objects found on a café table: a bottle, glass, folded newspaper, and utensils. Intricate in its composition and subtle in palette, this painting exemplifies Analytic Cubism, an artistic style devised by Picasso and Georges Braque between 1908–12 characterized by the fragmentary appearance of multiple, simultaneous viewpoints and overlapping planes. Maintaining a connection to the real world, Picasso inserted letters and numbers with personal and political meanings. The “fe 20” could refer to the word “café” and a street address. “EAN” above [P] ARIS may allude to the newspaper L’Intransigeant founded in 1880 in Paris; but ultimately, the meaning of these fragments remains mysterious and known only to the artist.