The Absinthe Drinker 1901

"The Absinthe Drinker" is a 1901 painting by Pablo Picasso, currently housed in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. This early work of Picasso, completed when he was only twenty, depicts a solitary figure seated at a table with a bottle of absinthe and a glass. The figure's melancholic expression and the somber color palette evoke the mood of late 19th-century Parisian cafes, where absinthe was a popular drink associated with bohemia and artistic circles. Picasso's use of bold, flattened forms and simplified lines anticipates the stylistic innovations of his later Blue Period.