Pablo Picasso 1881-1973

Aquatint with etching and grattoir, 1939, a fine impression of this important subject, Baer's fifth state, signed in pencil, numbered 4/30 by the artist, on Arches wove paper, with wide margins (deckled edge at sides), margin at top and bottom slightly reduced, in good condition, a small rubbed area in upper left background, small white mark in lower left corner, traces of hingeing at edges of sheet verso  

This aquatint can be seen in the context of a select group of works which include Sueño y Mentira de Franco, La Minotauromachie and La Femme qui Pleure, which are widely regarded as the artist’s most significant and emotionally powerful printed works.  Picasso has arranged his monumental dancer into a position of extreme contraposto thereby achieving not only a dramatic sense of monumental tension, but one of great movement too. In this way the image embraces both cubist and modernist ideas.

It has been suggested that the figure personifies Dora Maar, Picasso’s lover of the time. However, there is conceivably more to this enigmatic figure, for although her dance seems at first to signify elation and happiness, it was executed in 1939, during a period of rising political tensions; the intense black background, which envelops the figure, evokes the dark times that lay ahead for France and Europe as a whole. No matter whether inspired by love or the prospect of war, Picasso created what is undoubtedly the most important depiction of a full length female nude in his printed oeuvre.