PABLO PICASSO | Femme debout

Estate of the artist
Maya Widmaier-Picasso, Paris (the artist's daughter; acquired from the above)
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection, California
Danese Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above

Milan, Palazzo Reale, Pablo Picasso 1898-1972: 200 Masterpieces, 2001-02, no. 80, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Harriet & Sidney Janis, Picasso, The Recent Years, 1939-1946, New York, 1946, illustrated in the artist’s studio pl. 129
Roland Penrose, ed., Portrait of Picasso, New York, 1957, no. 259, illustrated in the artist’s studio p. 88 
Werner Spies, Sculpture by Picasso, New York, 1971, no. 87, illustration of another cast p. 275
Brassaï/Picasso, Conversations avec la lumière (exhibition catalogue), Musée Picasso, Paris, 2000, illustration of another cast p. 234
Picasso and Greece (exhibition catalogue), Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros, 2004, illustrated in the artist’s studio p. 64

The work is in very good condition. Dark brown patina. Some very minor spots of rubbing to the patina on the extremities of the sculpture. The neck of the figure was subject to a repair and a subsequent stabilization treatment in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Evidence of these repairs are not visible on the figure.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In the late summer of 1930, Picasso created a series of slender statuettes carved out of wood. These sculptures were more compressed in form than any he had ever attempted, marking a return to his early rough-hewn carvings of the 1900s as well as a sudden change of direction from the metal welded collaborations made with Julio Gonzáles in the late 1920s. Whittled out of fragments of stretchers in his studio in Boisgeloup, these elongated figures have proportions that give the impressions of giantesses. As Roland Penrose notes, “This ability to give scale to small objects so that they appear to be colossal is present throughout his work” (Roland Penrose, The Sculpture of Picasso, New York, 1967, p. 25). A photograph of Picasso’s studio taken in 1943 by the French photographer Brassaï shows several of the figurines on display on the top shelf of a glass vitrine (see fig. 1). Picasso admired Brassaï because of his ability to convey the monumentality of his sculptures and he was always eager to see the latest set of pictures to have been developed since they allowed him to look at his own work from without. “Read this book if you want to understand me” he said of Brassaï’s photo-chronicle Conversations with Picasso (1964).

In 1930, the magazine Documents published an essay illustrated with Etruscan bronzes from the Louvre and the Villa Giulia in Rome. “With all due caution in postulating a direct influence on Picasso, the parallels visible here—hieratic verticals from which only the arms slightly project—can hardly be coincidental,” writes Werner Spies. “The Etruscan bronzes seem to arrest movement and gesture. The eccentric shape of the wood from which Picasso carved most of his figures placed limitations on non-vertical movement” (Werner Spies, Picasso, The Sculptures, New York, 2000, p. 157).

This extraordinary and limited group of figurines was produced in a short burst of creativity before Picasso moved on to very different forms of expression with his bulbous bust sculptures of Marie-Thérèse the following year. They made a lasting impression, however, on Alberto Giacometti who met Picasso in 1931 and saw him regularly for the next twenty years. On first acquaintance the two artists were incredibly close and Picasso’s elongated forms in sculptures such as Femme debout were almost certainly the basis of the younger sculptor’s earliest experiments in attenuation with Femme qui marche. It is impossible to understand Giacometti’s ‘Surrealist period’ without keeping in mind all that Picasso’s art offered him at this time. Given the bearing which Giacometti’s sculpture had on the course of twentieth-century art it is difficult to overestimate the importance of the daring group of figurines by Picasso which inspired him.



Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.