Three Musicians provides a grand summation of Pablo Picasso's decade-long exploration of Synthetic Cubism, with its flat, patterned shapes, although painted in oil, echoing the cut and pasted papers of his collages of the period. Music was a favorite Cubist theme, and here Picasso equips Harlequin with a violin, Pierrot with a recorder, and the monk with an accordion. All three characters, which figure importantly in the history of painting and in Picasso's own earlier work, are derived from Italian, French, and Spanish popular theater and carnival traditions, but the artist had also encountered them more directly during recent visits to Italy as the set designer for Sergei Diaghilev's ballet. Indeed, the stagelike space of this monumental composition may be traced to Picasso's theatrical work. Quite probably a portrayal of Picasso himself (Harlequin) and two poet friends, the painting presents an allegory of the artist as performer, a major theme of Picasso's highly autobiographical work throughout his long life. Ann Temkin, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 318.

Three Musicians, with its flat, patterned shapes echoing the cut and pasted papers of the artist's earlier collages, provides a grand summation of Picasso's late Cubist style. Music was a favorite theme of the Cubists, and here Picasso equips the Harlequin figure with a violin, Pierrot with a recorder, and the monk with an accordion. The three characters, who figure prominently in the history of painting and in Picasso's earlier work, derive from Italian, French, and Spanish popular theater and carnival traditions, but the artist had encountered them more directly during recent visits to Italy as the set designer for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. A year before he painted Three Musicians, Picasso had designed costumes for Diaghilev's ballet Pulcinella, of which the choreography was based on commedia dell'arte. Indeed, the stagelike space of this monumental composition may be traced to Picasso's work for the theater. The peculiar triumvirate of characters has been interpreted as a commemoration of the recently deceased poet Guillaume Apollinaire in the form of Pierrot, with the poet Max Jacob as the friar and Picasso himself as Harlequin, the sad clown figure with whom he had identified in his early work. Emily Hage, from Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Impressionism and Modern Art (2007), p. 120.

Picasso painted Three Musicians in the garage of the villa he rented at Fontainebleau for the summer of 1921. This solemnly majestic oil painting, with its flat, patterned shapes echoing the cut and pasted papers of his collages, provides a grand summation of the artist's decade-long exploration of Synthetic Cubism. The three masked figures, with their sinister smiles and humorous false mustaches, are rendered in flat, overlapping planes that give them an intangible, paper-thin quality, which increases the strange, otherworldly atmosphere of this Cubist concert. Like actors on a stage, the musicians are arranged frontally in a shallow, boxlike space. Harlequin holds a violin and bow, Pierrot plays a clarinet (or recorder) above a sheet of music unfolded on the table, and a Franciscan friar in a homespun habit with a rope for his belt holds an accordion.

The appearance of costumed figures, derived from Italian popular theater and carnival traditions, also relates to Picasso's collaboration, beginning in 1917, with the Russian ballet. In the year before he painted Three Musicians, Picasso had designed costumes for Sergei Diaghilev's ballet Pulcinella, which had choreography based directly on commedia dell'arte types. The painting has also been interpreted as a symbolic and nostalgic elegy to Picasso's poet friends or his own lost bohemian youth.¹ According to this biographical reading, the mysterious triumvirate commemorates the recently deceased Guillaume Apollinaire, in the form of Pierrot, with the poet Max Jacob as the friar and Picasso himself as Harlequin, the sad-clown figure with whom he had identified in his earlier work. Picasso refused to part with the work for many years, before finally letting A. E. Gallatin acquire it for his Gallery of Living Art in New York in 1936. Gallatin was able to purchase the painting just before the Museum of Modern Art, which later bought another version of the subject. Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2000), p. 59.

Note:
1) Theodore Reff, "Picasso's Three Musicians: Maskers, Artists & Friends", Art in America, vol. 68, no. 10 (December 1980), pp. 124–42.