TITLE:
Pablo Picasso’s Cubism in Cadaqués, 1910
AUTHORS:
Enrique Mallen
KEYWORDS:
Picasso, Fernande Olivier, Cadaqués, Semiological Cubism
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Historical Studies,
Vol.15 No.2,
June
25,
2026
ABSTRACT: In the summer of 1910, Pablo Picasso stayed in Cadaqués, a small coastal town in Catalonia. The main evidence for the exact dates of the trip to Cadaqués comes from published letters, postcards, and memoirs. That period became a key moment in the development of Analytical Cubism, as has been argued by several authors. During this stay, Picasso pushed Cubism toward greater abstraction: forms were fragmented into overlapping planes, space became ambiguous, and subjects nearly dissolved into geometry. The goal was not to paint objects as they appear from a single viewpoint, but to analyze their structure by showing multiple perspectives at once. Objects were broken into intersecting planes and faceted surfaces, almost like visual dissection. This would lead to a second “Semiological Phase” of Cubism—especially around 1911-1914—when Cubist painting stopped mainly analyzing forms and began functioning more like a system of signs.