Boy Leading a Horse

A nude boy strides forward leading a horse through a bare, ochre landscape, the two figures given a calm, sculptural solidity and classical poise. Picasso painted Boy Leading a Horse near the end of his Rose Period, the wistful circus mood giving way to a sterner, more monumental simplicity drawn from ancient and Mediterranean art. Now in the Museum of Modern Art, it shows him reaching toward the structural weight that would soon explode into Cubism - the warm Rose palette cooled, the figures stripped to grave, archaic essentials of form.