Pablo Picasso: Boy Leading a Horse

This latest volume in the MoMA One on One series focuses on Pablo Picasso’s Boy Leading a Horse (1905-06).

Pablo Picasso developed Boy Leading a Horse (1905-06) from an unrealized mural during a pivotal period of evolution in his art. The youth in the painting exudes confidence, his clenched fist compelling the steed to follow him without any reins. The vigorous mark-making, relative lack of fine details, and varying hues of browns and grays are emblematic of a shift in Picasso’s practice, which would soon be replaced by the artist’s radical Cubist explorations in the ensuing years. In this volume of the One on One series, scholar Annemarie Iker offers a close examination of this composition, contextualizing it within the artist’s larger oeuvre.