Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Saidenberg Gallery Inc., New York
Acquired from the above in November 1969

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Œuvres de 1967 et 1968, vol. 27, Paris, 1973, no. 192, illustrated p. 70

Executed on an envelope, made of heavy card stock with uneven, hand-trimmed edges. The work is in generally good condition aside from very minor toning.
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Themes of sex and passion would appear in many guises throughout Picasso's final years, such as the virile musketeers and pipe-smoking brigadiers entangled in romantic encounters with women, or the relationship between the painter and his model. This last relationship preoccupied many of his works of the later 1960s; he executed a number of variations on the subject, inspired by the final love of the artist's life, Jacqueline Roque.

 

Discussing Picasso's works from the late 1960s, Marie-Laure Bernadac wrote: 'Picasso now chose to work with isolated figures, archetypes, and concentrated on the essential: the nude, the couple, man in disguise or stripped bare: it was his way of dealing with the subject of women, love, and the human comedy. After isolating the painter in a series of portraits, it was logical that Picasso should now paint the model alone: that is to say a nude woman [...] offered up to the painter's eyes and to the man's desire. It is characteristic of Picasso, in contrast to Matisse and many other twentieth-century painters, that he takes as his model – or as his Muse – the woman he loves and who lives with him, not a professional model. So what his paintings show is never a 'model' of a woman, but woman as model. This has its consequences for his emotional as well as his artistic life: for the beloved woman stands for 'painting', and the painted woman is the beloved: detachment is an impossibility. Picasso never paints from life: Jacqueline never poses for him; but she is there always, everywhere' (M.-L. Bernadac, 'Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model', in Late Picasso (exhibition catalogue), The Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 78).