Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Private Collection (acquired from the above circa 1997)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Jaime Sabartés, A los toros avec Picasso, Monte Carlo, 1961
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Œuvre de 1959 à 1961, Paris, 1968, vol. XIX, no. 358, illustrated p. 107
The Picasso Project (ed.), Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. The Sixties I, 1960-1963, San Francisco, 2002, no. 60-271, illustrated p. 90

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down and hinged in two places along the upper edge. All four edges are deckled. The sheet is slightly time stained. There are some studio marks on the verso, slightly visible on the recto at the upper right corner. There is a very faint impression along the lower edge from framing. This work is in overall good condition.
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Focusing on the female subject within Vieille et jeune femme, Pablo Picasso combines the figure of a young girl with the figure of the Celestina, or hooded old woman, a recurrent image throughout Picasso’s œuvre that first appeared in 1903-04. Depicted as facing each other, the figures convey a powerful dynamic against a plain background which helps to highlight the youth’s striking profile in contrast to the gnarled face of the old woman who looks up to her. Unlike most works from this series, the figures are presented as busts, allowing Picasso to concentrate on depicting the minutest details of the two faces.

In the autumn of 1960, the year in which the present work was executed, Picasso exhibited a series of drawings focused on a small repertoire of iconic Spanish images, of 'Slender ladies with towering mantillas, witchlike peasant women and flamenco dancers surround[ing] the impassive picador, centre of all admiration, in an aura of flying skirts and provocative gestures.' Penrose argues: 'The drawings, masterly in their creation of movement and suspense, were once a brilliant proof of Picasso's nostalgia for Spain and the ease with which he could communicate his passion to us. Never had the skill of his hand as a draftsman and the invention of his wit been used with more cunning and with more success' (Roland Penrose, Picasso, His Life and Work, London, 1971, p. 443).