Picasso and mediterranean archaism: the substrate of Gósol in 1906

Abstract

This article recreates Picasso’s stay in Gósol in the summer of 1906, using recently discovered documentary evidence and establishing a parallel with Catalan culture at the time of noucentisme, a movement with which the artist shared certain features. Primitivism, considered as a Mediterranean archaism, acted to tones down the effects of Iberian exclusivism. A rereading of the Carnet Catalan helps to evoke the sensation of the fiesta and popular tradition as a substrate of Picasso’s works in Gósol, as well as the works that crowned his great change in direction: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and The harvesters (Els segadors).