Alejandro Obregón Tres copas rotas (Three Broken Glass) 1956
Considered primarily a self-taught artist, Alejandro Obregón worked with Spanish painter Antoni Clavé and befriended Pablo Picasso, both of whom heavily influenced his work. Tres copas rotas was painted one year after Obregón left Spain, evidencing the influence of the late Cubist period of Picasso’s Guernica (1937) in the fragmentation of recognizable objects in confluence with geometric, abstract areas. The still life’s organization of multiple perspectives, exposed simultaneously on the picture plane, is representative of the artist’s early experimentation with new formal approaches. After moving to Colombia in 1955, Obregón became a vocal advocate of and active participant in a nascent scene of artists in search of a new pictorial language; he ultimately became known in Colombia as the “father of modern art.”
Identification
Title
Tres copas rotas (Three Broken Glass)
Production Date
1956
Object Number
2012.74
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Pérez
Copyright
© Alejandro Obregón
https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/2012.74
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
40 x 50 1/2 inches
Visual Description
Tres Copas Rotas by Alejandro Obregon is a painting from 1956. It is made of oil paint on canvas. It measures roughly three feet tall by four feet wide and it is hung in landscape orientation, meaning its longest side runs parallel to the ground.
The painting depicts still life, a genre of art that uses simple objects to symbolize a transient moment or a deeper meaning with some abstract forms.
Starting with the background of the composition, the majority of the painting is made of sections of blue, green, and purple geometric shapes. The shapes include triangles, squares, and rectangles. The blue paint covers most of the background, with the green section occupying the top center of the canvas and the purple section placed in the top right corner of the canvas.
In the center of the painting there is a large green and white rectangle that gives the impression of an abstract table. Its legs are made of two rectangles on either side. The one on the left is grey with white diamond shapes inside of it. The leg on the right is black with a white circle where it joins the table. Resting on the table there are three cups or goblets. The one on the far left is gold and shiny with streaks of yellow paint underneath it that resemble beams of light. The cup in the center has a black outline with a blue liquid inside of it. The cup on the right is red with flower-like ornamentation inside of it. Also resting on the table is a flower that is grey, black, white, red, and blue. To its right there is a brown loaf of bread. Above the bread there is a section of abstract shapes that create a series of circles and ovals that are green, blue, brown, black, olive, and purple.
Underneath the table there is a smaller rectangle painted green, white, blue, and grey. Inside of it there is a key that is painted white and blue. To the left of the rectangle there is an irregular shape that is similar to cloth hanging. It is painted yellow, orange, and white. Underneath the rectangle there is a similar cloth-like shape that is painted yellow, orange, brown, green, and grey.
