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Lot Essay
Painted in 1939, Femme debout et femme assise, which was exhibited in the artist's famous retrospective at the Grand Palais in 1966, was painted on the heels of his 1930s masterwork, Guernica, and only weeks after Germany invaded Poland, triggering the second world war.
The Spanish Civil War had opened new floodgates of anxiety and emotion in Picasso's work and this continued during the Second World War. Femme debout et femme assise is painted in the same grisaille as Guernica, in visual reminder of the newspaper photography of the time. The grisaille was particularly conspicuous coming as it did so soon after some of his most colorful, explosively exuberant paintings, namely those of his teenage mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter. While Picasso still occasionally turned to colors during the war, it was commonly with the sense of nostalgia or regret.
Picasso's ultimate war "muse" was Dora Maar, at the time his complex and conflict-ridden mistress. For years from the beginning of the conflict, Picasso painted her in various forms as the embodiment of the torment plaguing Europe. He showed her weeping, distorted or with sharp lines covering her face, sometimes merging her features with those of his dog Kasbec. Each figure in the present gouache can be read as Dora, the spectral seated woman at right as much as her willowy standing companion. Where most of Picasso's paintings of Dora from 1939 are intimate and distorted, Femme debout et femme assise are, by contrast, shown from afar in apparent token to his subject's duality.
The Spanish Civil War had opened new floodgates of anxiety and emotion in Picasso's work and this continued during the Second World War. Femme debout et femme assise is painted in the same grisaille as Guernica, in visual reminder of the newspaper photography of the time. The grisaille was particularly conspicuous coming as it did so soon after some of his most colorful, explosively exuberant paintings, namely those of his teenage mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter. While Picasso still occasionally turned to colors during the war, it was commonly with the sense of nostalgia or regret.
Picasso's ultimate war "muse" was Dora Maar, at the time his complex and conflict-ridden mistress. For years from the beginning of the conflict, Picasso painted her in various forms as the embodiment of the torment plaguing Europe. He showed her weeping, distorted or with sharp lines covering her face, sometimes merging her features with those of his dog Kasbec. Each figure in the present gouache can be read as Dora, the spectral seated woman at right as much as her willowy standing companion. Where most of Picasso's paintings of Dora from 1939 are intimate and distorted, Femme debout et femme assise are, by contrast, shown from afar in apparent token to his subject's duality.