The Pigeons

Pablo Picasso, 1957

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About This Work

Painted in the studio at La Californie, Cannes, during the same summer as the Las Meninas series, The Pigeons shows the view through the studio window to a terrace where pigeons gather. The work is a rare moment of pure observation in Picasso's late career — the Mediterranean light, the open window, and the birds create a luminous, almost Matisse-like scene.

Picasso had kept pigeons since childhood — his father José Ruiz Blasco was a painter of pigeons and doves. The dove became one of Picasso's most famous symbols through his 1949 lithograph for the World Peace Congress. The Pigeons at La Californie connects this personal and political symbol to the domestic tranquility of his late life.

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