La Danse (Etude pour 'Vase bleu')

Soon after Picasso returned to Paris from his working vacation in Gósol, Spain, during the summer of 1906, he went to see his friend Paco Durrio, a sculptor who had been the previous tenant of his studio in the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre. Paul Gauguin had given Durrio a large group of his work before leaving on his second and final trip to Tahiti in 1895. Durrio had learned from Gauguin the techniques of working in stoneware, and he had been urging Picasso, in whom he believed he had witnessed the reincarnation of Gauguin's genius, to experiment in making sculpture in fired clay.

The two artists may have worked together during the latter part of 1906, but nothing survives from Picasso's hand except for a couple of preparatory drawings--the present work, and a related sketch, La vase bleu (Zervos, vol. 22, no. 341; Daix, no. D.XIV.6), which was also formerly in the Bollag collection. The latter work shows the cylindrical form of the vase; there is a band of decoration along the bottom which incorporates a galloping horse and an elephant, relating the imagery in both drawings to circus themes seen earlier in Picasso's Rose period. It is possible that this project did not reach fruition for the reason that the artist had already left behind his interest in circus subjects, as well as in a blue tonality.