Pablo Picasso

Sale: Christie's, New York, 7th November 2001, lot 468
Piccadilly Gallery, London
Galeria Elvira González, Madrid (acquired from the above in 2004)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Rebecca West, Michel Leiris & Tériade (intro.), 'Suite de 180 dessins de Picasso, 28 Novembre 1953 au 3 Février 1954', VERVE, Vallauris, September 1952, nos. 29-30, illustrated n.p.
Rebecca West, Michel Leiris & Tériade (intro.), 'A Suite of 180 Drawings by Picasso and the Human Comedy', VERVE, New York, 1954, repr. & Eng. trans., illustrated n.p.
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso: Œuvres de 1953 à 1955, Paris, 1965, vol. XVI, no. 195, illustrated pl. 64
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: The Fifties I, 1950-1955, San Francisco, 2000, no. 54-095, illustrated p. 194

Executed on wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the backboard at three places on the reverse of the top edge. There is a small repair at the lower left corner and a fine band of slight discolouration at the extreme left edge of the sheet probably associated with previous mounting. This work is in very good condition. Colours: Fairly accurate in the printed catalogue.
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Femme, Peintre et Modèle is an exquiste illustration of Picasso's incredible talent for draughtsmanship and the intensity of emotion with which he created the famous series of drawings in the winter of 1953-54, of which the present work is one.

Writing about this period, Marie-Laurencin Bernadac observed: 'Between 18th November 1953 and 3rd February 1954, Picasso shut himself away in the deserted villa and produced at a dizzying pace 180 drawings which have as their central theme the painter and his model. Some of them additionally summon up and incorporate themes from the past: the circus, clowns acrobats and monkeys. Others anticipate the future: masks, old age, eroticism, jokes at the expense of the painter's trade, the comedy of the art milieu (Late Picasso, Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings and Prints 1953-1972, The Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 51).