Unlike Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who worked on a relatively small scale during the early 1910s, Albert Gleizes, like Jean Metzinger, preferred to develop his complex imagery on a larger scale in bold, vivid colors. Gleizes was primarily interested in portraying the human figure in relationship to the landscape, and in this painting he took this notion a step further by merging the two with elements of the still life. In Man in a Hammock he broke the composition down into several planes plotted along a linear grid. The figure holds a book by poet Alexandre Mercereau (French, 1884–1945), who introduced Cubism to Eastern Europe through a series of exhibitions in Moscow and Prague. Gleizes was familiar with Mercereau’s work and previously collaborated with him and others in the founding the Abbaye de Crétail, a utopian artistic and literary community in a suburb of Paris. The “man in the hammock” is quite possibly a self-portrait.

Label from Picasso: The Artist and His Models, November 5, 2016–February 19, 2017