Pablo Picasso

Private Collection  (acquired circa the 1980s)
By descent to the present owner

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1973, vol. XXVII : œuvres de 1967 et 1968, no. 137, illustrated p. 41

Executed on white wove paper, not laid down, fixed to the backing sheet at two points along the upper edge. The edges of the sheet are uneven and there are two extremely faint flattened creases running diagonally towards the lower right corner. There are traces of glue or tape on the reverse relating to a previous mount. Apart from some minor media marks and light discoloration around the edges (not visible when framed), this work is in excellent original condition.
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“In these close-up cinematic kisses, the two profiles merge into a single line, the noses bump together, bending into a figure of eight, the bulging eyes rise up towards the inverted forehead, the mouths devour each other; from two beings, Picasso makes one, thus expressing the carnal fusion at play in the act of kissing. Erotic power has never before been evoked with such realism”.

Marie-Laure Bernadac, "Picasso, 1953-1973 : la peinture comme modèle", in Le Dernier Picasso (catalogue d’exposition, Musée National d’Art Moderne), Paris, 1988, p. 43

 

From 1967 to 1969, Picasso completed several variations on the theme of the kiss, including nine drawings executed on the 7th and 8th October 1967, of which the present work is number III of the series. In these works, as the painter’s granddaughter Diana Widmaer Picasso explains, “two beings devour each other and become one … The kiss, the exchange of feelings, becomes a fusion. Embraces merge, couple, by turns vanquished or victorious, in an uncontrolled frenzy. We can no longer distinguish between the bodies of the two sexes. The masculine and the feminine switch places, becoming interchangeable” (Diana Widmaier Picasso, L’Art ne peut être qu’érotique, Paris, 2005, p. 30).

Executed right at the end of his life, these works represent the artist’s final homage to sensual pleasures. Even more than his earlier works, these kisses appear to illustrate perfectly Picasso’s “amorous cannibalism”. Indeed, there is something animalistic in the way in which these two lovers embrace, their eyes bulging, their tongues visible, baring their teeth. The bearded man, here practically devouring his lover, evokes the mythological figure of the Minotaur with whom Picasso identified himself, as an incarnation of the conflict between civilisation and savagery, between sexual instincs and repression. To quote Diana Widmaier Picasso again [op. cit., p. 7], “at the beginning there is the forbidden. The forbidden creates longing. Longing creates urges. From urges to fantasies, there is only one step. Which the artist crosses, revealing our naked, raw desires in order better to make them sublime.”