Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Galerie Rosengart, Lucerne
Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Paris, Galerie Louise Leiris, Picasso, dessins en noir et en couleurs 15 décembre 1969-12 janvier 1971, 1971, no. 33, illustrated in the catalogue p. 29
Zurich, Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Picasso: Drawings, Watercolors, Pastels, 1988, n. 28, illustrated in the catalogue n.n.

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, œuvres de 1970, Paris, 1978, vol. 32, no. 98, illustrated p. 41

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount in two places along the upper edge. The upper edge is perforated (not visible when framed). There are two very faint areas of discolouration at the upper two corners relating to mounting. Sheet is very slightly light stained. The sheet is slightly undulating. This work is in very good original condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

During the last years of his life Picasso never stopped painting and drawing and his many works testify to an astonishing virtuosity, combining the most complex of techniques. The works from these years reveal an artist at the height of his art, in constant search of innovation. The works shown at the now legendary exhibition at the Palais des Papes d'Avignon in 1970, the year of the present work, affirm this.

His creativity is expressed notably in the many sketchbooks filled with numerous ink, pen and felt drawings. These studies were a means for Picasso to abandon himself to real experimentation. As is the case of the present work, he marked a number and date at the bottom of each of these drawings as if the better to emphasize their feverish succession. They are none the less guided by a logical and planned development.

Through these two sensual, sculpted figures Deux nus demonstrates how much Picasso, at the end of his life, managed to keep intact his sense of eroticism and his technical mastery. Here the artist gives one of his many interpretations of his favorite theme: the female nude. The techniques employed in the present work are diverse; the pure, serene line of the right hand figure evokes thus the classical works of the 1920s whilst the hatched lines sculpting the face of the left hand figure echo the masklike faces of the glorious years of the Demoiselles d'Avignon. Deux nus thus appears as the accomplished synthesis of the Spanish master's art who, only a few years before his death, was able to assert a creative genius that was still very much alive.