On 20th January 1957 Pablo Picasso met the Norwegian painter and sculptor Carl Nesjar in what was to prove the first of many meetings and a rich artistic collaboration. Nesjar was a skilled sculptor who was experienced with a particular type of concrete construction with an additional element of artistic embellishment or sculpting. This artistic process, known as Naturbetong, was particularly experimental and, therefore, likely to be of considerable interest to the master of modern art who was at the time looking for a means of creating large scale works of art for public spaces. When Nesjar showed Picasso the photographs of his Naturbetong works in Oslo Picasso exclaimed: ‘You should have been here last week. I have been waiting for you!’ (Picasso quoted in, Sylvette, Sylvette, Sylvette. Picasso und das Modell (exhibition catalogue) Bremen, 2014, p. 200). The two artists would continue to work together for the next seventeen years producing seminal works, including a series of sandblasted murals onto the H and Block Government Buildings in Oslo and large sculptures of Picasso’s muse Sylvette. Another product of this momentous coming together of creative minds was Picasso agreeing to produce an edition of 250 lithographs for the Norwegian art club Aktuell Kunst.

This October, Sotheby’s is pleased to present three works coming fresh to the market from the family of Carl Nesjar, to whom they were gifted. Each work on paper is executed atop a frontispiece, one of which has been removed from a book whilst the other two remain inside the original book bindings, and they all reflect the playful and tirelessly inventive imagination of Picasso.

The present work was executed in June 1961, a few months after the artist married Jacquleine Roque and is reflective of the joy the artist was experiencing living in Mougins with his new wife and working on numerous projects including his continued ceramics practice and his work with Carl Nesjar. In Tête de femme de profil Picasso applies bold lines of white pastel on top of thick strokes of ink to create a strikingly graphic and elegant work in monochrome.