Pablo Picasso

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paris

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris

Heinz Berggruen, Paris

Jacques Linden, New York

Juviler Collection, New York

Norman Granz, New York

Justin K. Thannhauser, New York (acquired by 1978)

Estate of Madame Justin K. Thannhauser, Bern

New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Masterpieces of Modern Art, 1965, n.n. (titled Still Life)

Bern, Kunstmuseum, Sammlung Justin K. Thannhauser, 1978, no. 52, illustrated in the catalogue

 

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1953 à 1955, vol. 16, Paris, 1964, no. 248, illustrated pl. 77

The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Fifties I, 1950-1955, San Francisco, 2000, no. 54-142, illustrated p. 208

The work is in excellent condition. Original canvas. Surface is slightly dirty. Under UV light no inpainting is apparent.
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Throughout the 1940s and 50s Picasso returned recurrently to the genre of still-life, first when he was confined to his Parisian studio during the war years, and later, when he was living in domestic comfort in Vallauris with his companion Françoise Gilot and subsequently, with his newfound love Jacqueline Roque. In these latter pictures, including La Citronade, the artist applies the same linear emphasis and graphic quality that he uses in his portraits of Gilot and Jacqueline (fig. 1).

Painted in February 1954, shortly after Françoise Gilot had left him, the present work belongs to a period of transition when Picasso was uncertain about his future with new love Jacqueline Roque and still emotionally involved with Françoise. This sense of emotional uncertainty is reflected in La Citronade with its pictorial language of flattened picture planes and dual perspectives. Marie-Laure Bernadac observed that the events in Picasso's private life had significant bearing on his art, and all of the elements in his paintings, including still-lifes, have an autobiographical significance. "Indeed under each pot, bowl of fruit, or guitar, there lurks a story, a person, or anecdote that is part of the painter's life. Because of the autobiographical nature of his art, and because he assigned an equal value to the animal, mineral, plant, and human realms, he painted whatever was around him" (M.-L. Bernadac, "Painting from the Guts: Food in Picasso's Writings", in Picasso and Things (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992, p. 22). Referring to the still-lifes of this period, the artist himself proclaimed: "I want to tell something by means of the most common object, for example a casserole, any old casserole the one everybody knows. For me it is a vessel in the metaphorical sense, just like Christ's use of parables" (quoted in Françoise Gilot, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 74).  

With its painterly qualities and patterned wallpaper, the present work also demonstrates Picasso's great admiration for the work of his rival, Henri Matisse (fig. 2). In a fascinating survey of the relationship between Picasso and Matisse, Yves-Alain Bois noted that, "For half a century, his debate with Matisse had been a structuring force" (Matisse and Picasso (exhibition catalogue), Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1999, p. 231). Towards the end of Matisse's life, Picasso made statements and painted canvases that show his deep understanding of Matisse's aesthetic, so different from his own. Referring to a series of still-lifes dating from the spring of 1945, for example, Bois quotes Picasso as saying: " 'I push them less and less... If I go beyond a certain stage, it would no longer be what it is. I would lose in spontaneity what I might gain in solidity. I use less and less color, and allow the virgin canvas to play its part more and more.' No utterance could be more Matissean" (ibid., p. 179).

Frances Morris wrote about the symbolism of Picasso's still-lifes: "Above all it was the still-life genre that Picasso developed into a tool capable of evoking the most complex blend of pathos and defiance, of despair to hope, balancing personal and universal experience in an expression of extraordinary emotional power. The hardship of daily life, the fragility of human existence and the threat of death are themes that haunt Picasso's still-life paintings of the war and Liberation periods" (F. Morris, Paris Post War, Art and Existentialism 1945-1955 (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 155).