Image: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
View source →The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro
Pablo Picasso, 1909
Technical Details
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
60.3 × 50.2 cm (23.7 × 19.8 in)
Style
Analytic Cubism
Decade
1900s
About This Work
This landscape of the village of Horta de Ebro in Catalonia is one of the first fully Cubist paintings, showing the buildings and landscape fragmented into interlocking geometric planes. The village's cubic architecture — its flat-roofed houses and angular streets — proved perfectly suited to Picasso's emerging Cubist vision. The painting demonstrates how the natural world could be analyzed and reconstructed according to geometric principles.
Picasso spent the summer of 1909 in Horta de Ebro with Fernande Olivier, and the landscapes he painted there mark the decisive transition from Proto-Cubism to Analytic Cubism. The village's architecture seemed to anticipate Cubism, and Picasso later said that he had learned everything he knew from Horta.
Current Location
Valuation & Provenance
2026 Estimated Value
$15–25 million (est.)
* Estimates are based on comparable auction results and market analysis. Not a formal appraisal.
Last Known Sale
$8.2 million
2010
Sotheby's New York
Keywords
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