Lot 141
  • 141

Pablo Picasso

Estimate
4,000,000 - 6,000,000 USD
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Description

  • Pablo Picasso
  • FEMME ASSISE
  • Signed and dated Picasso 20.2.49 (upper left); dated 20.2.49 on the reverse
  • Oil on canvas
  • 45 3/4 by 35 in.
  • 116.2 by 88.9 cm

Provenance

Samuel Kootz Gallery, New York
Muriel Kallis Newman, Chicago (acquired in 1960)
Acquired as a gift from the above in 1975

Exhibited

Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Pablo Picasso, 1953, no. 92
Milan, Palazzo Reale, Pablo Picasso, 1953, no. 137
New York, Samuel Kootz Gallery, Picasso, 1956
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Collectors, 1963
The Art Institute of Chicago, Picasso in Chicago, 1968, no. 46

 

Literature

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1946 à 1953, vol. 15, Paris, 1965, no. 123, illustrated pl. 71
A. James Speyer and Courtney Donnell, Twentieth Century European Paintings, Chicago, 1980, no. 3D11, illustrated p. 64
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, Liberation and Post-War Years, 1944-1949, San Francisco, 2000, no. 49-004, illustrated p. 217

Catalogue Note

On February 20, 1949, the day Picasso painted Femme assise, he executed two very different works. In another canvas with the same title, Femme assise (Zervos vol. 15, no. 119; see fig. 1) the body and head are treated in the radically stylized manner that found its most extreme expression in the celebrated portrait of Françoise Gilot, Femme fleur (Zervos, vol. 14, no. 167). Another large work – Claude à deux ans dans sa petite voiture (Zervos, vol. 15, no. 120; fig. 2) – is evidence of Picasso’s delight in the amusements of his young son. Although Picasso is noted for the many changes of style throughout his long career, he never really abandoned approaches that had proved effective in the past if the occasion arose when they were needed.

Picasso had met Françoise Gilot, a talented young artist, in April 1943, although he did not start living with her until April 1946. Following a period during which his simultaneous involvement with Dora Maar and Marie-Thérèse Walter, the mother of his daughter Maya, had caused numerous misunderstandings, and coinciding with the end of World War II, Picasso’s relationship with Françoise led to significant new developments in his art. The serious demeanor of much of the work of the war years largely disappeared as Picasso worked on large decorative projects such as Joie de Vivre, 1946 (Musée Picasso, Chateau Grimaldi, Antibes) and numerous portraits of his young mistress. Although Picasso informed Françoise when he was painting Femme fleur that “I don’t see you seated. You’re not at all the passive type. I only see you standing,” he generally depicted her seated in an armchair.

The present work was executed at the same time as a series of portraits of Françoise that reveal Picasso’s ongoing dialogue with Matisse (see fig. 3), and it shares certain characteristics with them, notably the division of the surface of the canvas into clearly defined areas of bold color and the use of a network of black lines that achieved definitive form in La Cuisine (Zervos, vol. 15, no. 107). For Picasso, however, the theme of a woman seated in an armchair that had become an obsession since shortly before the war had not been exhausted of possibilities when the principal occupant had become Françoise, the mother of his two children. Seated in a yellow chair against a background evenly divided into zones of red and blue, the figure in Femme assise with her long shock of red hair is comfortably installed. Her head looks back to some of the more savage remodelings of the features of Dora Maar (see fig. 4) but without the angst.

Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, Femme assise, February 20, 1949, oil on canvas, Private Collection

Fig. 2, Pablo Picasso, Claude à deux ans dans sa petite voiture,  oil on canvas, Private Collection

Fig. 3, Pablo Picasso, Jeune femme en robe bleu ciel, March 18, 1949, oil on canvas, Private Collection

Fig. 4, Pablo Picasso, Tête de femme (Dora), June 11, 1940, oil on paper, Musée Picasso, Paris