Abstract

On the tricentennial of Velázquez's Las Meninas(1656-7), Picasso made a peculiar and titanic tribute to this historical masterpiece of Spanish painting, deconstructing it in a series of fifty-eight oil paintings between August 14 and December 30, 1957. We could reach a consensus in accepting - at least - that two creative processes are at play in Picasso's Las Meninas: (1) the deconstruction of the Velazquez's work in a series and (2) the construction of a total of 58 oil paintings that deserve to be appreciated qualitatively as a totality, an aspect to which I will refer using the term suite, which (like Goodman's word variation) I will borrow from the field of music. This article aims to explore the qualitative reasons of this suite as a totality, exploring its strategies of deconstruction of Velazquez's 1656-7 work and focusing on what I consider the political reasons of Las Meninas and Picasso's intimate relationship to death exorcism as the inner construction devices of the suite.