PABLO PICASSO (SPANISH, 1881-1973)

Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Maya Widmaier-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.

“A few lines,” Picasso declared, “that’s enough isn’t it? What more need I do? What has to happen, when you finally look at it, is that drawing and color are the same thing” (quoted in Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 85).

Executed in 1966 using strong colorful lines, in Tête d’homme Picasso playfully combines two horses’ heads to form a brawny man’s face. Picasso's works often feature a sense of fun and play, and this increased greatly in his later works, which were often peopled by a huge range of eccentric, dashing and imaginary characters. Many of the heads of men were often analogues for the artist himself, as was the case with the harlequins, matadors, musketeers and artists who often populate these compositions.

Here, Picasso demonstrates that he was continuing to push the boundaries of art, deconstructing his subject in order to reconstruct it in new and unexpected ways. By the time he created Tête d'homme, he was a living legend, identified with figuration by generations. While figuration and facture, at each end of the artistic spectrum, may have been disregarded by artists who had embraced either abstraction or Pop, Picasso was continuing to examine its relevance, and was doing so in a manner that also explored his own life and legacy.