Les coulisses du cirque

Details

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Les coulisses du cirque
signed, dated and numbered 'Picasso 25.1.54. IV' (lower left)
brush and India ink on paper
9 3/8 x 12 5/8 in. (23.8 x 32 cm.)
Painted on 25 January 1954

Provenance

Lee Ault & Company, Inc., New York.
Acquired from the above by the late owners, March 1973.

Literature

E. Tériade, ed., "Suite de 180 dessins de Picasso, 28 novembre 1953 au 3 février 1954," Verve, nos. 29-30, fall 1954 (illustrated prior to signature).
E. Tériade, M. Leiris, and R. West, intro., A Suite of 180 Drawings by Picasso, Picasso and the Human Comedy, New York, 1954 (illustrated prior to signature).
W. Boeck and J. Sabartés, Picasso, New York, 1955, p. 332 (illustrated, p. 337).
C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1965, vol. 16, no. 227 (illustrated, pl. 72).
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Fifties I, 1950-1955, San Francisco, 2000, p. 202, no. 54-127 (illustrated).

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Vanessa Fusco

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Lot Essay

Lots XX and XX were executed by Picasso for Verve, the French art periodical which featured designs by well-known modern artists of the twentieth century. In 1954, Verve's publisher, Estafros Tériade, illustrated one hundred and eighty drawings by Picasso, including these lots, which were drawn in Vallauris that winter. Tériade remarked that this collection of drawings were Picasso's "finest, boldest, [and] most poignantly human of all he has produced in the course of his long and brilliant career."

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