Pablo Picasso

Dr. & Mrs. Milton Ratner, Chicago
The Pace Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above

Chicago, International Galleries, Picasso, Drawings 1961-1968, 1968, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue
Chicago, R.S. Johnson International Gallery, Homage to Picasso (1881-1973), Fifty-two Drawings, Watercolors and Pastels (1900-1972), 1973, no. 18, illustrated in the catalogue

Hélène Parmelin, Picasso, Intimate Secrets of A Studio at Nôtre Dame de Vie, New York, 1966, illustrated p. 112
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1964, vol. XXIV, Paris, 1971, no. 156, illustrated pl. 57
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Sixties II, 1964-1967, San Francisco, 2002, no. 64-145, illustrated p. 46

Executed on cream wove paper. The edges of the sheet are deckled. The work is in excellent condition and the colors are very bright and fresh.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

For several months in 1964 Picasso focused on male busts—images of smokers and quasi-self portraits were the most common output of this series. As Jean Sutherland Boggs has observed, "When in 1964 Spitzer, a Berlin publisher, sent Picasso a packet of reproductions of one of his own paintings of an artist, he proceeded to make variations of it—painting curly-haired painters, bearded painters, clean-shaven painters, painters with square hats, painters with flattened fedoras—some young, some old but all working with manic intensity on their canvases, all surprised by the results. At the same time he was making drawings of the heads of other people with equal fervor. One series was of a man, often smoking (Picasso himself was an incessant smoker). In drawings of this man Picasso combined particularly brilliant calligraphic motifs of different colors to suggest a distraught human being. From the series there is also a deeply melancholy portrait of Jacqueline. But the difference is that these other works do not contain a canvas or a sheet of paper, which seems to provide a resolution—or at least an excuse—for the excitement of the painter" (Jean Sutherland Boggs, The Last Thirty Years, Picasso in Retrospect, 1973, p. 235).

As Marie-Laure Bernadac notes, "with their bearded, elongated faces, their huge questioning eyes, their long hair with or without hats, these Heads represent one last concession on the painter's part to the 'all too-human.' By contrast with the musketeers who all have the same face—these are true portraits, strongly characterized and individual... Picasso's confrontation with the human face, which makes him into the great portrait-painter of the twentieth century, brings him back to a confrontation with himself, the painter, young or old" (M.-L. Bernadac, Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, 1953-72 (exhibition catalogue), London, 1988, pp. 82-83).