Passeig de Colom

In spite of its modest dimensions, "Passeig de Colom" presents a fair number of significant features. Within the series of Picasso’s 1917 works in the museum’s collection, it is the only picture that contains a reference to landscape. It is also the last of Picasso’s works in which the city of Barcelona is distinctly featured.
Several contrasts are juxtaposed in the composition, which is structured through complementary perspectives seen from different angles in a markedly Cubist approach. The balcony opening represents the dialogue between interior and exterior, and each side, framed by the typical folding shutter, is depicted in a range of whites and greys: the left appears bright and sharp, touched by sunlight, while the right appears sombre and blurred. The cast-iron railing is the key pictorial element: its reflection in the window pane is silhouetted and slanted, in the centre of the composition it forms a V shape that casts a black shadow, yet looking on to the landscape it appears more realistically in white, merging skilfully into the flag waving from the adjacent building. The house next door is indeed another realistic reference, along with the sea, the palm trees, the silhouette of Montjuïc mountain and the monument to Christopher Columbus, a symbol of the city. The range of brushstrokes – from the impasto of the scrolls of the railing and the short strokes of the sky, to the thin covering of the huge triangular patches of black – confers a great complexity to the ensemble.
Picasso painted this picture from a balcony of Hotel Ranzini, at 22 Passeig de Colom, barely a short distance from his family home. The hotel was the base of Diaghilev’s ballet company, which had fled the First World War and was presenting Parade ballet in Barcelona, for which Picasso had designed the set and costumes. The same hotel balcony was also the backdrop for several portraits of Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with the Russian company who became his first wife.