ABSTRACT
George retreated to his forest residence after completing the Borella murals. It was here that he composed some of his most vivid and sensuous paintings. In many ways we can see in the bold delineation, the distortion of form and the bisection and dissection of faces the influence of Picasso. Keyt had seen and read a great deal of Western art by this time and also through Wendt had seen issues of Cahier d’Art. His understanding of Picasso can be assessed from portions of his letters to friends. As he writes,
So funny the application of Cubism to architecture! As Picasso said, as if Michelangelo should be invited to dinner by some admirer and shown a renascence sideboard suggested by his statue of Moses. But of course it doesn’t follow that to be influenced by certain kinds of pictures and sculpture is to produce vulgarized versions of the genuine thing. . . . If the creative talent is there no vulgarization will result. See Raphael and Braque. Most of Braque is almost identical with Picasso, who influenced him so much. But yet no vulgarization. Juan Gris I know nothing of and I didn’t like the only thing I saw of his – reproduced in Gertrude Stein’s book.1
