Three Musicians

Picasso’s farewell to Cubism’s heroic decade: three masked players built from flat, bright planes — collage remembered in pure paint, and a quiet elegy for lost friends.

1. 1
   Three masks

   Across the top, three masked faces stare straight out: the diamond-costumed Harlequin at left, the white Pierrot in a black domino mask at center, a hooded monk at right. They are flat, frontal and unreadable — carnival masks, not portraits, which is part of why the picture feels haunted.
2. 2
   The instruments

   A clarinet held to the center figure’s mouth, a violin in the hands of the Harlequin at left — the “music” of three musicians, rendered as flat brown and black shapes. You read the instruments by their silhouettes, the way you’d read a paper cut-out.
3. 3
   The sheet music

   On the table, a sheet of music with actual staves and notes — one of the few “realistic” passages in the picture, a small window of legibility in a wall of flat color.
4. 4
   Flat shapes, cut and laid down

   The Harlequin’s costume is a field of orange-and-cream diamonds, built as flat interlocking planes with hard edges — exactly the look of pasted colored paper. Nine years after Chair Caning, Picasso paints collage instead of gluing it.