Pablo Picasso

Galerie Welz, Salzburg
Acquired from the above in 1985

Vienna, Rathaus Wien, Picasso in Wien - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Bilder, Zeichnungen, Plastiken, 1981, no. 97
Salzburg, Galerie Welz, Pablo Picasso, 1985, no. 20B, illustrated in the catalogue

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Œuvres de 1971-1972, Paris, 1978, vol. XXIII, nos. 310 & 311, illustrated pl. 109
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Final Years, 1970-1973, San Francisco, 2004, nos. 72-045 & 72-046, illustrated p. 281

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, suspended in the mount with several small strings adhered with wheat paste. All four edges are deckled. The sheet is very slightly time stained and gently undulating. Overall this work is in very good condition.
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This extraordinary double-sided drawing is testament to Picasso’s natural flair as a draughtsman. Executed in 1972—when, aged 91, Picasso’s own physical stamina had inevitably waned—his focus on erotic subjects in his paintings and drawings only intensified. In Diana Widmaier Picasso’s monograph on her grandfather’s art from these years, she claims that 'painters go about their painting to fulfill urgent needs and work off their passions' (Diana Widmaier Picasso, Picasso, New York, 2005, p. 10). This was undoubtedly the case for Picasso, who longed for the physical sensations that now eluded him. Rendered with a confident and free-flowing brush and ink line, the image of the reclining nude on the recto image of the present work is one of pure sensuality, and takes the odalisque paintings of Ingres and Matisse as clear art historical references. The figure holds a single flower which forms the compositional focus of the sheet, surrounded by the serpentine lines of her oversized breasts, eyes and lips, as well as her looming right hand. On the verso image, the female figure writhes in ecstasy, the male figure cast in the diminutive background role, clasping the disintegrating woman’s face in both hands, symbolic of Picasso’s desperate last attempt to cling onto his sexual identity. The contortions of the figure, whose sharp profile resembles that of Jacqueline, call to mind some of Picasso's most sensual depictions of the voluptuous Marie-Thérèse from the 1930s. In this later work, though, a male figure has entered the composition, whose physical proximity to the nude could be interpreted as the ageing artist himself reclaiming the sexual stamina of his youth.

'I have less and less time and I have more and more to say', Picasso commented in his last decade (quoted in Klaus Gallwitz, Picasso Laureatus, Lausanne & Paris, 1971, p. 166). The freedom and spontaneity of his late work, together with the recourse of archetypical figures and symbols, reflect both a growing awareness of his mortality, as well as a conscious decision to allow himself total liberty with both style and subject matter. Rather than ponder the details of human anatomy and perspective, the artist isolated those elements of his subject that fascinated and preoccupied him most, and depicted them with his signature confidence and wit.

'Art can only be erotic', Picasso famously remarked, and the drawings on both sides of this sheet certainly embody this belief. Themes of sex and passion appeared in many guises throughout Picasso's final years, such as the virile musketeers and pipe-smoking brigadiers entangled in romantic encounters with women, or the image of the painter and his model depicted in the studio. The relationship and synergy between the artist and model was one of profound complexity: 'the more Picasso painted this theme, the more he pushed the artist-model relationship towards its ultimate conclusion: the artist embraces his model, cancelling out the barrier of the canvas and transforming the artist-model relationship into a man-woman relationship. Painting is an act of love, according to Gert Schiff, and John Richardson speaks of 'sex as metaphor for art, and art as a metaphor for sex' (Marie-Laure Bernadac, 'Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model,' in Late Picasso (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 77).