PABLO PICASSO | La Parade

Haaken Christensen, Oslo
Private Collection, Norway (by descent from the above; sale: Sotheby's, London, 26th June 2008, lot 135)
Waddington Galleries, London (purchased at the above sale)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2010

Oslo, Galleri Haaken, Picasso: Peintures - Sculptures - Dessins, 2004, illustrated in colour in the catalogue n.p.

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, œuvres de 1970, Paris, 1977, vol. XXXII, no. 38, illustrated pl. 24

Please note that there is a professional condition report for this work, please contact mariella.salazar@sothebys.com to request a copy.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Picasso's inspiration for itinerant figures, costumes, and masked characters in his œuvre can be traced back to his Spanish childhood and his familiarity with Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Performers signified for the artist the golden age of painting and allowed him to escape the limitations of contemporary subject matter. The subject of a parade harks back to the courtly performers of the Renaissance and Picasso brilliantly resurrected this leitmotif for a 20th century audience.   Picasso completed La Parade when he was in his eighties. Virulent and light-hearted, the playful vitality of the present work paradoxically reflects the artist’s waning youth and vigour. Picasso produced an astonishing number of paintings and drawings in his final years, assuming a sense of urgency, almost as if he was trying to beat the passage of time. Commenting on the artist's late style, Marie-Laure Bernadac wrote: 'The desire to lose control, to take fewer and fewer decisions ('I don't choose any more'), is characteristic of Picasso's late style [...]. Picasso expresses this mental wanderlust, this refusal to stay put or to regard anything as definitive, in a maxim: "To finish an object means to finish it, to destroy it, to rob it of its soul"'(quoted in Marie-Laure Bernadac, 'Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model”, in Late Picasso: Paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints 1953-1972 (exhibition catalogue), The Tate Gallery, London, 1988, pp. 87-88). The freedom and spontaneity of La Parade, together with the recourse to archetypal figures and symbols, reflects a growing awareness of his own mortality and a final reconsideration of his past. A burst of creativity, it demonstrates how Picasso allowed himself total liberty in style and subject matter. 'I have less and less time and I have more and more to say' commented Picasso in his last decade (quoted in Klaus Gallwitz, Picasso Laureatus, Lausanne & Paris, 1971, p. 166).

During 1917-24, Picasso collaborated with the Ballet Russes, an itinerant ballet company, conceived by Sergei Diaghilev, which was widely regarded as the most influential ballet company of the 20^th century. As he collaborated on several productions, his theatre years caused him to travel to Rome, Barcelona, Madrid and London. His most iconic work for the Ballet relates to the 1917 production of Parade, the subject of the present work, for which Picasso produced elements in two distinctive styles: a magnificent Cubist stage and a neoclassical curtain. The idea behind the ballet Parade derived from Jean Cocteau, the plot centered around a parade of circus artists who quirkily tried to attract the audience members into entering an indoor performance. Upon the opening of Parade, Picasso's cubist costumes created a notable scandal but also attained brilliant success. Newly married to the ballet dancer Olga Koklova, this phase of Picasso’s life was undoubtedly the most enjoyable of his early life, and it ensured him to revisit the theme throughout his career. Executed in pencil, Picasso creates a strange cast of extravagantly thespian characters, giving La Parade a striking individuality; it has the spontaneity of a whimsical drawing but is coupled with a rare breadth of decorative vision.

The present drawing has distinguished provenance having been in the personal collection of Haaken Andreas Christensen, one of the preeminent figures of the Norwegian art world, whose collection was offered in a memorable sale at Sotheby's London in 2008, to fund the French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres. Christensen pioneered a highly influential gallery which thrived at the centre of the Oslo cultural art scene for more than forty years. Christensen graduated from the University of Oslo with a master's degree in art history and his choice of thesis on Gustave Courbet brought him to Paris where he befriended the legendary dealer Daniel Henry Kahnweiler and encountered works by Picasso. La Parade exemplifies Picasso’s extraordinary skill at capturing an imaginative and amusing narrative on paper.