Pablo Picasso

Marina Picasso
Galerie Jan Krugier, Genève
Collection particulière, France

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol. 11, œuvres de 1940 et 1941, Paris, 1960, no. 219, illustré p. 93

Executed on buff-coloured, chemical paper, not laid down. Apart from a very thin light flattened crease running diagonally in the composition, this drawing is in very good condtion overall.
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dated '16 juillet 1941' (lower right), ink on paper. Executed in 1941.

Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, Femme dans une fauteuil (Dora), 1941-42, Kunstmuseum, Bâle.

Cette œuvre représente quatre portaits et études de Dora Maar, artiste et photographe de talent, proche du mouvement surréaliste. C'est en 1936 qu'elle fait la rencontre de Picasso. Bien qu'il soit alors marié à Olga Kojhlova et qu'il entretint une relation avec Marie-Thérèse Walter, il s'en éprend irrésistiblement. Durant les huit années d'une relation intense et passionnée, il ne cessera de représenter celle qui incarne sa compagne, son amante et sa muse.

A cet égard, Brigitte Léal fait justement remarquer que "les portraits de Dora Maar comptent parmi les oeuvres les plus abouties de Picasso, à un moment où l'artiste se lance dans une troisième voie, d'un esprit plus surréaliste, rejetant toute représentation naturaliste ou abstraite [...]. En signant ses portraits, Picasso sonne le glas du règne de la beauté idéale et ouvre la voie d'une esthétique tyrannique, celle d'une terrible et tragique beauté, fruit de notre histoire contemporaine" (Brigitte Leal, '''For charming Dora': Portraits of Dora Maar'', in Picasso and Portraiture (catalogue d'exposition), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996, p. 385).

 

The present work is a sheet of studies of Dora Maar, a talented artist and photographer closely associated with the Surrealist movement. Picasso's portraits of her are amongst the most penetrating images of his entire œuvre. Picasso met Dora Maar in 1936, and although he was still married to Olga Kokhlova and having an affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, he began an intense relationship with her: her image soon appeared in the artist's work, and over the next eight years she became his lover, companion and principal muse.

Brigitte Leal writes that the portraits of Dora Maar 'remain among the finest achievements of his art, at a time when he was engaged in a sort of third path, verging on Surrealist representation while rejecting strict representation and, naturally, abstraction [...]. There is no doubt that by signing these portraits, Picasso tolled the final bell for the reign of ideal beauty and opened the way for the aesthetic tyranny of a sort of terrible and tragic beauty, the fruit of our contemporary history' (Brigitte Leal, '''For charming Dora': Portraits of Dora Maar'', in Picasso and Portraiture (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996, p. 385).