

PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED COLLECTOR
Acquired from the above in 1985
Edward Quinn & Pierre Daix, The Private Picasso, Boston, 1987, photograph of the plaster version p. 62
Werner Spies & Christine Piot, Picasso, The Sculptures, Stuttgart, 2000, no. 412, illustration of another cast p. 373
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Fifties I, 1950-1955, San Francisco, 2000, no. 51-071, illustration of another cast p. 62
Picasso, The Mediterranean Years, 1945-1962 (exhibition catalogue), Gagosian Gallery, London, 2010, photograph of the plaster version p. 312
Picasso, Picasso and Françoise Gilot, Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953 (exhibition catalogue), Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2012, photograph of the plaster version p. 243
Picasso Sculpture (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2016, photograph of the plaster version p. 202
The present work was executed in Vallauris, a coastal extension of Antibes in southeastern France where Picasso lived from 1948-1955. Picasso’s Vallauris period was undoubtedly the most productive sculptural period within his oeuvre. From his legendary collages made with chair caning and newspaper to his sculpture of a bull's head made from a bicycle seat, Picasso's most ingenious works of art were often created from objects that he found in daily life. By the 1950s, he had taken this process a step further – assembling objects that he found in the environs of his home and casting them in plaster, and then casting the completed sculpture in bronze to unify the piece with a homogeneous medium. Picasso often made preliminary sketches of these works, which detail how he would implement the miscellaneous objects within the body of the composition. While working in his studio of Le Fournas in Vallauris between 1950-53, the artist executed a considerable number of these sculptures in the forms of goats, birds and other animals, creating a veritable menagerie from objets trouvés. Commenting once to his wife Françoise Gilot on this production, Picasso explained, "My sculptures are plastic metaphors. It's the same principle as in painting. I've said that a painting shouldn't be trompe l'oeil…but…trompe l'esprit. I'm out to fool the mind rather than the eye. And that goes for sculpture too" (quoted in Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1966).
Tête de femme exemplifies Picasso's intentions to challenge the mind's perception of the visual. Tête de femme was cast in an edition of two at the Valsuani foundry; one unnumbered cast and no. 2/2. There is also an original in plaster and fired clay which measures 51 cm in height.