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Lot Essay
Buste d'homme was painted in March 1969, during a surge of productivity and inspiration that preceeded his now famous exhibition in the Palais des Papes in Avignon in 1970. Picasso unleashed upon an unsuspecting public a new, energetically-rendered pantheon of characters, each of whom burst from the wall through the vitality of their own sense of character and also through the force of their creation, so palpable in Buste d'homme. The musketeer figures such as Buste d'homme were of relatively recent pedigree in Picasso's pictures by the time this work was painted. Originally, they had sprung to life in drawings and prints over the previous few years; soon, though, Picasso turned to the medium of the Old Masters in order to explore them in a manner that had already been used in his confrontation with his fellow Spaniard Diego Velázquez in his sequence of pictures inspired by the latter's masterpiece, Las meninas, now in the Prado, Madrid. The ruffs, padded jackets and beards of characters such as the subject of Buste d'homme owe themselves in part to that work and to Picasso's treatment of it.
Las meninas had doubtless been on Picasso's mind again by the time he painted Buste d'homme, as only the year before his friend and secretary, the poet Jaime Sabartés, had died; in commemoration, Picasso donated his own series of Las meninas pictures to what is now the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. The musketeers and other figures from that era also owed their existence to a range of other influences. He told Pierre Daix at one point that, 'It's all the fault of your old pal Shakespeare,' referring to some images of the playwright that he had created half a decade earlier to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his birth (Picasso, quoted in P. Daix, Picasso: Life and Art, New York, 1993, p. 355). Meanwhile, Jacqueline told André Malraux that 'Picasso had discovered those musketeers in an album on Rembrandt during his last illness,' referring to his convalescence from an operation he underwent in late 1965 (A. Malraux, Picasso's Mask, New York, 1994, p. 86).
The link between the dashing, often humorous characters such as Buste d'homme and Picasso's recuperation is often considered direct: with the death of many of his friends and his own illness, he was now fighting back thoughts of mortality. His iconoclastic reincarnations of Rembrandt's and Velázquez's knights and nobles were filled with bravura brushwork that spoke of the artist's incredible energy in creating them. Colour and character alike are present in Buste d'homme as well as Picasso's never-extinguished thirst for gleeful provocation, almost tangible in the depiction of this face of days of yore, this reincarnation of one of the protagonists of Alexandre Dumas' Les trois mousquetaires.
Las meninas had doubtless been on Picasso's mind again by the time he painted Buste d'homme, as only the year before his friend and secretary, the poet Jaime Sabartés, had died; in commemoration, Picasso donated his own series of Las meninas pictures to what is now the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. The musketeers and other figures from that era also owed their existence to a range of other influences. He told Pierre Daix at one point that, 'It's all the fault of your old pal Shakespeare,' referring to some images of the playwright that he had created half a decade earlier to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his birth (Picasso, quoted in P. Daix, Picasso: Life and Art, New York, 1993, p. 355). Meanwhile, Jacqueline told André Malraux that 'Picasso had discovered those musketeers in an album on Rembrandt during his last illness,' referring to his convalescence from an operation he underwent in late 1965 (A. Malraux, Picasso's Mask, New York, 1994, p. 86).
The link between the dashing, often humorous characters such as Buste d'homme and Picasso's recuperation is often considered direct: with the death of many of his friends and his own illness, he was now fighting back thoughts of mortality. His iconoclastic reincarnations of Rembrandt's and Velázquez's knights and nobles were filled with bravura brushwork that spoke of the artist's incredible energy in creating them. Colour and character alike are present in Buste d'homme as well as Picasso's never-extinguished thirst for gleeful provocation, almost tangible in the depiction of this face of days of yore, this reincarnation of one of the protagonists of Alexandre Dumas' Les trois mousquetaires.