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Lot 171
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Homme assis et femmes nus (recto); Etude de femme nue (verso)
Closed24 June 2010
Price Realised
GBP 337,250
More Information
Specialist note
Maya Widmaier-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of the recto and verso of this work.
Homme assis et femmes nus is a powerful example of the radical modernity and classical roots that distinguish Pablo Picasso's late works. As was the case in many of the greatest works from this period, Picasso is paying tribute to the Old Masters. During the last fifteen years of his life Picasso very rarely travelled, but from his villa in Notre-Dame-de-Vie he found visual inspiration in art books, postcards, and above all his extraordinary memory. In this work, the group of women at the left probably refers to The Three Graces by Rubens (Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid), which Picasso must certainly have remembered from the time he spent in the Prado as a student, studying and sketching after the Old Masters.
At the same time as Picasso references the Old Masters, in this drawing he employs a medium and technique that are deliberately child-like. Nearly 90 years old and with a young wife and young children, he experimented with the colour crayon and pencils that his children used, amusing himself and remarking to Herbert Read that 'When I was a child I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to draw like a child' (quoted by H. Read in The Times, 26 October 1956).
Homme assis et femmes nus is a powerful example of the radical modernity and classical roots that distinguish Pablo Picasso's late works. As was the case in many of the greatest works from this period, Picasso is paying tribute to the Old Masters. During the last fifteen years of his life Picasso very rarely travelled, but from his villa in Notre-Dame-de-Vie he found visual inspiration in art books, postcards, and above all his extraordinary memory. In this work, the group of women at the left probably refers to The Three Graces by Rubens (Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid), which Picasso must certainly have remembered from the time he spent in the Prado as a student, studying and sketching after the Old Masters.
At the same time as Picasso references the Old Masters, in this drawing he employs a medium and technique that are deliberately child-like. Nearly 90 years old and with a young wife and young children, he experimented with the colour crayon and pencils that his children used, amusing himself and remarking to Herbert Read that 'When I was a child I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to draw like a child' (quoted by H. Read in The Times, 26 October 1956).