Still Life with Chair Caning

Still life with Chair Caning' is an ovular 1912 mixed-media collage work by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) which is considered to be the first cubist collage as well as by some the first assemblage. The work consists of oil and printed oilcloth (a waterproof fabric used for tablecloths - here imitating the chair caning material i.e. rattan) on canvas edged with rope. It is said that by introducing the facsimile of a newspaper into the work that he was introducing a dose of reality into the "fictive realm of painting".

In this work still life was also the subject matter as it was among one of the first Synthetic Cubist collage works. In these works, still-life objects overlap and intermingle, barely maintaining identifiable two-dimensional forms, losing individual surface texture, and merging into the background—achieving goals nearly opposite to those of traditional still life.

The work is held in the permanent collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris.