Peintre et modèle

Of the Verve series, of which the present drawing is part, Rebecca West has written: "A short time ago there occurred what is perhaps the most prodigious artistic event of the [20th] century. Pablo Picasso, at the age of seventy-two, opened his sketch-book on the twenty-eighth of November 1953, and went on drawing in a frenzy of industry until the third of February, 1954. In those nine weeks he produced one hundred and eighty drawings of great beauty. This would be an amazing feat for an artist still at the noon of his physical powers. But the drawings, which are now issued in a single volume by the great French firm of art publishers, VERVE, have a value beyond the fantastic circumstances in which they were produced and the superb wit and justice of their line. Picasso simply set down on paper the images which passed through his mind during those nine weeks, which were for him a period of acute emotional disturbance. This volume takes us, therefore, inside the mind of the most gifted artist of this time, who has always presented a special problem precisely because he has refused to confide in his age, and has been indifferent when his art has been resented as enigmatic" (in M. Leiris, op. cit., p. 21).