Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired directly from the artist)
Fuji Gallery, Japan
C & M Arts, New York (acquired before 1999)
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in May 2001 and sold : Sotheby's, London, 23rd June 2010, lot 132)

New York, C&M Arts, Figurative Art in the 20th Century, 1999, n.n.

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1977, vol. XXXII : œuvres de 1970, no. 102, illustrated pl. 42

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, examined unframed with no mount. The upper edge is perforated. The lower two corners have been supported. There are tape and glue remnants to the edges on the reverse of the sheet, due to previous mounting. The imprint of another drawing (probably from the same sketchbook) can be seen on the reverse, causing a very slight waviness to the sheet. Otherwise this work is in very good condition.
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“Right til the end, Picasso devoted his body and soul to his art. His final works deliver a more personal message than that of other great painters in their twilight years […]. This is why his final period constitutes the culmination of his artistic evolution. It can cannot be descibed as a “swan song” since it is in fact the apotheosis of his career.” (Picasso, The Last Years, 1963-1973 (exhibition catalogue) Gray Art Gallery & Study Center, New York University, New York, pp. 11-12).

Executed four months before Picasso’s 89^th birthday, Nu debout et nu assis is emblematic of the creative frenzy that defined this final period marked by the passing of many of his close friends: his secretary Jaime Sabartés in 1968 followed by Christian and Yvonne Zervos in 1970 and the closing of the mythical Bateau-Lavoir the same year. Secluded in his  Mougins villa, the painter never stopped producing, as if in an ultimate attempt to forestall the inevitable. The several notebooks filled with drawings in pen, ink and felt-tip reveal this renewed productivity but also a profoundly experimental approach. The artist himself declared of this period “I have less and less time but more and more things to say”  (Late Picasso (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p.85), and thus numbered and dated each drawing that filled these sketchbooks, highlighting the fact that this frantic outpouring of drawings was nevertheless guided by logical evolution.

Nu debout et nu assis offers an original interpretation of the Painter and his Model theme depicted countless times by the maestro. While we may first identify the two figures as two distinct nudes or two juxtaposed studies, close examination reveals that the model is in fact face to face with a painted image of herself, delicately touching her reflection with her hand, in a gesture that recalls that of the paintbrush touching the canvas. Occupying the position usually inhabited by the painter, the standing nude thus becomes Picasso’s alter ego. Through these sensual figures, with sculptural forms and disproportionate limbs, Nu debout et nu assis shows how, at the end of the life, Picasso had lost none of his sense of eroticism.