Three Musicians

Three Musicians is a large oil painting created by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. He painted two versions of Three Musicians. Both versions were completed in the summer of 1921 in Fontainebleau near Paris, France, in the garage of a villa that Picasso was using as his studio. They exemplify the Synthetic Cubist style; the flat planes of color and "intricate puzzle-like composition" giving the appearance of cutout paper with which the style originated. These paintings each colorfully represent three musicians wearing masks. The two musicians in the center and left are wearing the costumes of Pierrot and Harlequin from the popular Italian theater Commedia dell'arte, and the right one is dressed as a monk.

Although both versions share the same subject, the darker version today is more famous than the other. The more famous version is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City and the other version is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.