PABLO PICASSO | Homme et femme nus

Galerie Louis Leiris, Paris
Marlborough Gallery, Madrid & New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in February 2015

New York, Marlborough Gallery, On Paper: Selected Drawings of the 19th and 20th Centuries, 2000, no. 103, illustrated in the catalogue p. 28
Florida, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Picasso: Passion and Creation/The Last Thirty Years, 2001, n.n., illustrated in the catalogue p. 41

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Œuvres de 1971 à 1972, Paris, 1958, vol. XXXIII, no. 248, illustrated p. 248

Executed on white fibrous paper and not laid down. The sheet is affixed to the mount at intermittent points along the edge of the verso. The edges are naturally deckled. There are some very minor creases and handling marks to the edges, most notable in the upper left corner. There is a small cluster of foxing towards the upper right corner and a further spot in the date to the lower right corner. This work is in overall very good condition.
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A powerful example of Pablo Picasso’s mature drawing, Homme et femme nus is imbued with an extraordinary sensuality and eroticism. Depicting a woman languorously enclosed within the embrace of a somewhat satyr-like male, the present work superbly embodies the words of the critic Jeffrey Hoffeld: ‘[Picasso, in his art,] is a voluptuary, hedonist worshipper of flesh and orgiastic tumble’ (Jeffrey Hoffeld, Picasso, The Late Drawings, New York, 1988, p.6) Homme et femme nus, executed in crayon and India ink, expertly combines the two mediums exemplifying Picasso’s technical brilliance, where blurring washes of ink are used to create an atmosphere of confusion and the rendering of the bodies as a composite of disjointed and angular planes recalls Picasso’s Cubist experimentations of the 1910s. Underlying ripples of sexual frustration and the struggles and physical hardships facing the aging painter are given potent expression in this work, as Hoffeld notes:  ‘Contortionist sexual gymnastics, if only portrayed rather than actually lived, vicariously restore confidence, relive despair, and provide recollected moments of orgasmic oblivion.’ (ibid., p.13).

Picasso’s sensual rendering of the female body and the voyeuristic old man behind her in this work give resonance to the words of the artist’s granddaughter, Diana Widmaier Picasso: ‘What underlies Picasso’s entire work – the only thing – is an erotic drive transformed into artistic desire. One is an extension of the other’ (Diana Widmaier Picasso, Picasso, ‘Art Can Only Be Erotic’, Munich, 2005, p.7).