A masterpiece of poetic humour, Three Musicians is also a testament to technical skill. It is the first work in which Picasso attempted a composition with three figures within the rigorous constraints of synthetic Cubism. The flat surfaces of colour, simple and rectilinear, are laid out in such a way that everyone can see what they stand for, but it is the hieratic nature of the three masked figures, visible even in the smallest reproduction of their mass is exaggerated by its comparison with the musicians’ tiny hands.
Even more fascinating is the fact that when we look at the Three Musicians, we instantly hear a kind of spontaneous music. Possibly it was Picasso’s first experience of fatherhood that put him in such a good mood. Olga had born him a son in February 1921, That summer, instead of returning to the coast, Picasso rented a spacious villa at Fontainebleau. It was here that he painted his two versions of Three Musicians, which can be seen as the flowering of synthetic Cubism, enriched by his recent experiences as a theatrical designer.