Modernism

Don Quixote

Pablo Picasso, 1955

Don Quixote is Pablo Picasso's ink drawing of 10 August 1955 showing Cervantes's knight on Rocinante, with Sancho Panza, windmills and a blazing sun, made for the 350th anniversary of the novel. It was published in Les Lettres françaises.

Artist: Pablo Picasso
Date: 1955
Medium: Ink on paper
Movement: Modernism

Literature & Poetry

Don Quixote is a brush-and-ink drawing by Pablo Picasso, dated 10.8.55 (10 August 1955) at lower left. He made it for the French weekly Les Lettres françaises to mark the 350th anniversary of the publication of the first part of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote in 1605, and it appeared in the paper that August. It quickly became one of the most reproduced images Picasso ever made.

What you are looking at

The whole scene is drawn in black on white with fast, heavy strokes. In the center, tall and gaunt, sits Don Quixote on his bony horse Rocinante. His body is a thin vertical scaffold of lines: a stick-like neck, a narrow face with a pointed beard, and on his head a helmet like an upturned bowl, recalling the barber's basin the knight mistakes for the helmet of Mambrino. He holds a long lance upright and a round shield, and his legs dangle in long straight lines toward the ground.

To the left, Sancho Panza is a squat black blob perched on his donkey, whose long ears and spindly legs echo the lance. Above, a sun like a spiky ring of short dashes blazes in the sky. On the low horizon stand small windmills, the giants of the novel's most famous episode. The ground is a few rough marks.

How it was drawn

The drawing has the speed of calligraphy. Picasso reduces each figure to a few gestures and lets the white paper do most of the work. Thick, worked-over strokes around Quixote's torso and arms show where he changed his mind, while Rocinante's legs and neck are single, confident lines. The contrast between the thin knight and the round squire, the visual joke at the heart of Cervantes, is made entirely through shape.

Picasso and Cervantes

As a Spaniard living in France, Picasso had a strong attachment to Don Quixote, the founding novel of Spanish literature, about an idealist who goes out to right the world's wrongs and is mocked for it. Les Lettres françaises, edited by the poet Louis Aragon, was closely linked to the French Communist Party, which Picasso had joined in 1944, and the paper published several of his drawings.

Where is the original?

Countless prints and posters derive from the published version. Accounts of where the original sheet is kept vary, and it is not on regular public display. For Picasso's paintings see The Old Guitarist, Weeping Woman and Cat Catching a Bird, and more at Pablo Picasso.

Questions & answers

When did Picasso draw Don Quixote?

Picasso dated the drawing 10 August 1955. He made it quickly, in ink, for the French weekly Les Lettres françaises, which published it that month to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the first part of Cervantes's novel Don Quixote, published in 1605.

What does Picasso's Don Quixote show?

It shows the knight Don Quixote on his thin horse Rocinante, holding a lance and shield, with his squire Sancho Panza on a donkey beside him. A blazing sun hangs overhead, and small windmills, which the deluded knight mistakes for giants in Cervantes's best-known episode, stand on the horizon.

Where is the original Picasso Don Quixote drawing?

The original ink drawing is not on regular public display, and published accounts of its whereabouts differ. What most people know is the version reproduced in Les Lettres françaises in August 1955, which has since been copied in countless prints, posters and reproductions.

More by the artist

Pablo Picasso

All works →

A woman in a red hat with a blue flower holds a white handkerchief to her face, which is broken into yellow, green and white planes, with black tears — Pablo Picasso, The Weeping Woman, 1937 — The Weeping Woman
Pablo Picasso · 1937

A gaunt, blind old man in ragged blue clothes sits hunched cross-legged over a brown guitar against a blue background — Pablo Picasso, The Old Guitarist, 1903–04 — The Old Guitarist
Pablo Picasso · 1903–04

A blond woman with closed eyes sleeps in a red armchair, her head tilted back, beads at her neck, against green and red patterned walls — Pablo Picasso, Le Rêve, 1932 — Le Rêve (The Dream)
Pablo Picasso · 1932

A woman with a double lilac-and-yellow face reaches toward a tall oval mirror holding a darker, distorted reflection, against diamond-patterned wallpaper — Pablo Picasso, Girl before a Mirror, 1932 — Girl before a Mirror
Pablo Picasso · 1932

A large snarling striped cat with glaring eyes holds a struggling, wounded black bird in its jaws against a grey sky — Pablo Picasso, Cat Catching a Bird, 1939 — Cat Catching a Bird
Pablo Picasso · 1939

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