Painted in 1964, Buste d’homme is a vivid example of Picasso’s late paintings of the male subject. As Marie-Laure Bernadac writes, “The most striking feature of the late period is undoubtedly its vitality… Accumulation and speed were the only defences he [Picasso] had left in his fight to the death with time. Every work he created was a part of himself, a particle of life, a point scored against death. ‘I have less and less time’, he said, ‘and I have more and more to say’. What allowed him to gain time, to go faster, was his recourse to conventional signs, formal abbreviations, the archetypal figure that concentrates the essence of what he has to say” (Marie-Laure Bernadac in Late Picasso(exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1988, pp. 84-85). Bernadac relates this to Picasso’s use of masks and disguise in the male portraits of this period – the present work was conceived among a panoply of musketeers, matadors and painters all of whom embody a sense of power and masculinity.

 

Having gone through so many phases of stylistic and technical experimentation, Picasso now pared down his style in order to paint monumental works in quick, spontaneous brushstrokes. Rather than ponder the details of human anatomy and perspective, he focused his energies of expressing this sense of immediacy. Louise d'Argencourt writes: “The contemplative character of Picasso's last works – expressed in part in the tranquil poses of his seated figures, the importance given to their heads, and the absence in them of all agitation – is often balanced by a spirited execution that makes use of many painterly effects” (Louise d'Argencourt in Pablo Picasso, Meeting in Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, 1985, p. 284). This is particularly true of Buste d’homme in which Picasso mixes bold primary colours and rich blacks and greys, painting with both broad, sweeping brushstrokes and energetic staccato effects, to create a work of startling intensity and energy.