Pablo Picasso

Galerie Rosengart, Lucern

Stuttgarter Kunst Kabinett, Stuttgart

Private Collection

World House Galleries, New York

Private Collection, Nara Japan (acquired in 1985)

Private Collection

Paris, Galerie Louise Leiris, Picasso Peintures, 1955-1956, 1957, no. 92

Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 1985 -87 (on loan)

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1956 à 1957, vol. 17, Paris, 1966, no. 66, illustrated pl. 29

The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Fifties II, 1956-1959, San Francisco, 2000, no. 56-006, illustrated p. 24

In the summer of 1955, Picasso bought La Californie, a large and ornate nineteenth century villa overlooking Cannes, with view of Golfe Juan and Antibes (see fig. 1).  He set up his studio on the ground floor in a room with French windows overlooking a lush gardes (see fig. 2).  Over the next several months the studio became cluttered with paintings from earlier periods, sculptures in various stages of completion, and some of the artist's favorite memorabilia.  The studio served not only as the locus where his works were produced but also as the subject itself of a series of important paintings of that decade. 

Between March 30 and  April 2^, 1956 (see fig. 3), Picasso painted four large, horizontal canvases depicting his studio. Each work shows the same section of the room, with great attention paid to the large windows and the play between the leading of the window panes and  palm trees framed behind.  In each composition are indications of both painted and blank canvases, an easel, tables and a samovar in the lower left corner.  The paintings have a grandeur and sobriety due to the dark palette, strong contrasts between lights and darks, and the hushed sense of the studio as a sacred space. The Spanish character of these works is immediately recognizable, is was the influence of Picasso's great artistic predecessor, Diego Velazquez.

From April 3^rd to the 7^th, Picasso continued to paint new versions of the studio scene, but in these works he included the figure of Jacqueline Roque seated towards the left edge of the composition.  The solemnity of the scene and focus on the artist’s rituals and implements is herein relieved by the presence of his mistress (Picasso would marry her in 1961).  In each painting, Jacqueline is obediently posed in strict profile and seems to lend no more emotional weight to the composition than the various props about her; yet, her presence alludes to the elision of the artist’s personal and professional life.  In some works, the canvas before her is blank and gleaming white, while in others, the painting on the easel is finished, or at least clearly in progress.  In Jacqueline in the Studio (Zervos, vol. III, no. 67), Picasso layers the metaphor by actually showing a painting of the studio on the easel.   In the present work and another composition (Zervos, vol. III, no. 62), Picasso's sculpture of the pregnant woman stands on a sculpting table at the opposite edge of the canvas (see fig. 5).

Fig. 1, The artist in the main studio and living room of La Californie.  Photograph by Edward Quinn COMP: 129NY8125

Fig. 2, The view of the living room of La Californie with its doors opening to the garden.  Photograph by Edward Quinn COMP: 128NY8125

Fig. 3, Pablo Picasso, L'Atelier, April 2, 1956, oil on canvas, Private Collection COMP: 123NY8125

Fig. 4, Pablo Picasso, Femme dans l'atelier (Jacqueline Roque), April 3-7, 1956, oil on canvas, The Speed Art Museum, Louisville COMP: 124NY8125

Fig. 5, The plaster cast one of the artist's sculptures in his studio.  The cast of this sculpture is depicted in the present work.