Pablo Picasso

Private Collection, Italy (acquired in Basel in 1970)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Œuvres de 1965 à 1967, Paris, 1972, vol. XXV, no. 205, illustrated p. 105
The Picasso Project (ed.), Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. The Sixties II 1964-67, San Francisco, 2002, no. 66-064, illustrated p. 248

Executed on cream wove paper laid down on canvas. There are lines of tape along the edges of the recto. There is a tear to the lower left corner approximately 2cm. long (possibly relating to the laying down process) and a crease across the lower right corner. The sheet is time stained and the colours bright. This work is in overall good condition.
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By 1969, when the present work was executed, Pablo Picasso had achieved staggering success: he was recognised as the forefather of Modern Art and enjoyed reputation as the world’s greatest living artist. The Tate Gallery’s sensational exhibition in London in 1960, the biggest retrospective of the artist’s work to date, was variously billed as ‘the exhibition of the century’ and ‘the world’s first art blockbuster’. At the close of the exhibition, once the crowds had dissipated, the guardsman meekly admitted: 'I’m not sorry it’s over. It made a change but it was all a bit hectic'.

The artist’s concern about success – or rather his concern that success might compel staid repetition in his art – is perhaps the drive behind the breathless vibrancy of his later works. Picasso stated: 'Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others.' (quoted in Peter John (ed.) The Artist, vol. 93, 1978, p. 5). Tête d’homme is characterised by its animation: thick strokes of rich blue form deep eyes which meet the viewer’s bold gaze, while thin frenetic lines of coloured crayons are scored onto the page to make a bristly mane and beard. The present work illustrates Picasso’s total facility of the medium and easy confidence, achieved through years of experience and experimentation.

From the 1960s onwards, one of Picasso’s preferred subjects was the individual, frontal male portrait. He produced a series of pseudo-historical studies, which typically derived from 17^th-century portraiture. While less direct than his representations of musketeers, the present work invokes the golden age of Dutch art with the hint of a ruff around the man’s neck. His dramatic reconfiguration of 17^th-century art typifies Picasso’s skill and self-assurance: he was successor to the Dutch masters and father of Modernity.