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Lot Essay
‘Picasso lived this painting of tears, blue as the humid depths of the abyss, and full of pity’
Guillaume Apollinaire
(quoted in P. Daix & G. Boudaille, Picasso, The Blue and Rose Periods: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1900-1906, London, 1967, p. 51).
‘The painter has been able to give form to a sigh, to make inert bodies breathe, to infuse life into the dead’
Jaime Sabartés
(quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. I, 1881-1906, London, 1991, p. 217).
Bathed in a translucent shade of ethereal blue, and highlighted in places with flashes of white gouache, the shadowy form of a seated female figure emerges in Pablo Picasso’s Femme accroupie (Crouching Woman), a rare work executed in 1903. Picasso created this work on paper after he had returned to Barcelona from Paris. It was during this fifteen month stay back in his native home that Picasso painted the most celebrated works of his Blue Period, as he delved into the deepest parts of the human psyche and immersed himself in the themes of human suffering, which he rendered in his distinctive palette of blues. Notably, this work was included in Picasso’s first ever museum retrospective: the landmark 1932 exhibition of his work held at the Kunsthaus Zurich. That it was included in this exhibition is testament to its embodiment of the style and aesthetic of this defining period of Picasso’s art – the first distinctive and unique style the artist created.
Picasso had returned to Barcelona in January 1903. He had been living in Paris since October of the previous year. This second sojourn in Paris had not been a success however; indeed, it was a period marked by failure and poverty for the artist, so much so, that Picasso purposefully shrouded recollections and details of this time – a period that he later called one of the most miserable of his life – in mystery. On his return to Paris, he desperately tried to sell his paintings to dealers including Durand-Ruel and Vollard, neither of whom bought anything. Moving from room to room across the city, he soon ran out of money, unable to buy art supplies nor even candles or oil for a lamp. As the winter drew in, the artist was both freezing and starving, left with little other option than to return home to Barcelona. ‘After returning to Barcelona around the middle of January, he remained for well over a year, but this would be his last prolonged stay on Spanish soil’, John Richardson has written. ‘Defeat had made him more than ever determined to go back to Paris and prevail. Where else could a modern artist get a measure of his own powers?’ (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. I, 1881-1906, London, 1991, p. 267).
Back in Barcelona, Picasso moved back in with his parents, taking a room to use as a studio further down the street. Though he longed to be in Paris, he threw himself into his work, painting what would become some of the great early masterpieces of his career, all painted between 1903 and early 1904, including La vie, La celestina, Le vieux guitariste aveugle, Le repas de l'aveugle, and L'ascète. ‘For the next fifteen months Picasso set about perfecting the synthesis towards which he had been working ever since the Vollard show eighteen months earlier’, Richardson writes. ‘And within a very few months he had arrived at a romantically agonised view of life and a style that was appropriately eloquent, mannered and, for all its derivations, original’ (J. Richardson, ibid., p. 269). It was during this transformative period that Picasso executed Femme accroupie.
The image of a woman crouching, looking melancholic, downtrodden, destitute and forlorn, was one of the recurring motifs of Picasso's Blue Period, and Femme accroupie is immediately reminiscent of the images of absinthe drinkers, frugal repasts and other expressive figures immortalised in those works. Indeed, with her seated, near crouching pose, Femme accroupie is closely related to an important series of Blue Period canvases depicting crouching women – archetypes of female suffering – that Picasso started in Paris in the autumn of 1901 and continued following his return to Barcelona in January 1902 (Zervos, vol. I, nos. 105, 119-121, 133 & 160). Picasso had found his models for this series in the women’s prison in Montmartre. He found that he could paint these poor women, most of whom were prostitutes, free of charge, and their destitute situations seemed to correspond to a growing sense of depression in his own life and current situation. Yet, in the present work, Picasso has seemingly removed this nude figure from any contextual or narrative setting; her identity is enigmatic, her impassive expression inscrutable. As Pierre Daix described the works of this 1903 Barcelona period, ‘His work became finer and stronger. His blues deepened, the figures went through stages of undress to stand revealed in all their expressive nudity’ (Daix, quoted in P. Daix & G. Boudaille, Picasso, The Blue and Rose Periods: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1900-1906, London, 1967, p. 218). In this way, this figure transcends the time of its creation to become a singular evocation of humanity that defines the artist’s later Blue Period works, as he mined the depths of human sentiment and emotion to create works that induce powerful waves of compassion.
Acquired by the Salon Bollag, Femme accroupie was lent to the 1932 Zurich Kunsthaus for Picasso’s first major museum exhibition. Held in the autumn of 1932, this show followed the large exhibition that had been held in Paris, at the Galerie Georges Petit earlier in the year; indeed, over half of the paintings from Paris travelled to Zurich, where they were joined by forty-three new works, and an array of works on paper. This was a landmark moment in the life and career of Picasso. Having turned fifty the previous year, the artist was well aware of his growing age, and was insistent that the retrospective look to the future rather than canonise his past. He was intricately involved with the hang of the exhibition in Paris, choosing not to display his works chronologically, by period, but instead mixing styles and subjects together. Though he was not as directly involved with the curation of the Zurich exhibition, he travelled there with his wife Olga and son Paulo at the beginning of September, a few days before the opening, to oversee the final preparations. These two successive exhibitions saw the artist’s fame reach an unprecedented level. Regarded as one of the greatest living artists, Picasso was celebrated the world over, the astonishing diversity, power and innovation of his life’s work displayed for all to see.
Guillaume Apollinaire
(quoted in P. Daix & G. Boudaille, Picasso, The Blue and Rose Periods: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1900-1906, London, 1967, p. 51).
‘The painter has been able to give form to a sigh, to make inert bodies breathe, to infuse life into the dead’
Jaime Sabartés
(quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. I, 1881-1906, London, 1991, p. 217).
Bathed in a translucent shade of ethereal blue, and highlighted in places with flashes of white gouache, the shadowy form of a seated female figure emerges in Pablo Picasso’s Femme accroupie (Crouching Woman), a rare work executed in 1903. Picasso created this work on paper after he had returned to Barcelona from Paris. It was during this fifteen month stay back in his native home that Picasso painted the most celebrated works of his Blue Period, as he delved into the deepest parts of the human psyche and immersed himself in the themes of human suffering, which he rendered in his distinctive palette of blues. Notably, this work was included in Picasso’s first ever museum retrospective: the landmark 1932 exhibition of his work held at the Kunsthaus Zurich. That it was included in this exhibition is testament to its embodiment of the style and aesthetic of this defining period of Picasso’s art – the first distinctive and unique style the artist created.
Picasso had returned to Barcelona in January 1903. He had been living in Paris since October of the previous year. This second sojourn in Paris had not been a success however; indeed, it was a period marked by failure and poverty for the artist, so much so, that Picasso purposefully shrouded recollections and details of this time – a period that he later called one of the most miserable of his life – in mystery. On his return to Paris, he desperately tried to sell his paintings to dealers including Durand-Ruel and Vollard, neither of whom bought anything. Moving from room to room across the city, he soon ran out of money, unable to buy art supplies nor even candles or oil for a lamp. As the winter drew in, the artist was both freezing and starving, left with little other option than to return home to Barcelona. ‘After returning to Barcelona around the middle of January, he remained for well over a year, but this would be his last prolonged stay on Spanish soil’, John Richardson has written. ‘Defeat had made him more than ever determined to go back to Paris and prevail. Where else could a modern artist get a measure of his own powers?’ (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. I, 1881-1906, London, 1991, p. 267).
Back in Barcelona, Picasso moved back in with his parents, taking a room to use as a studio further down the street. Though he longed to be in Paris, he threw himself into his work, painting what would become some of the great early masterpieces of his career, all painted between 1903 and early 1904, including La vie, La celestina, Le vieux guitariste aveugle, Le repas de l'aveugle, and L'ascète. ‘For the next fifteen months Picasso set about perfecting the synthesis towards which he had been working ever since the Vollard show eighteen months earlier’, Richardson writes. ‘And within a very few months he had arrived at a romantically agonised view of life and a style that was appropriately eloquent, mannered and, for all its derivations, original’ (J. Richardson, ibid., p. 269). It was during this transformative period that Picasso executed Femme accroupie.
The image of a woman crouching, looking melancholic, downtrodden, destitute and forlorn, was one of the recurring motifs of Picasso's Blue Period, and Femme accroupie is immediately reminiscent of the images of absinthe drinkers, frugal repasts and other expressive figures immortalised in those works. Indeed, with her seated, near crouching pose, Femme accroupie is closely related to an important series of Blue Period canvases depicting crouching women – archetypes of female suffering – that Picasso started in Paris in the autumn of 1901 and continued following his return to Barcelona in January 1902 (Zervos, vol. I, nos. 105, 119-121, 133 & 160). Picasso had found his models for this series in the women’s prison in Montmartre. He found that he could paint these poor women, most of whom were prostitutes, free of charge, and their destitute situations seemed to correspond to a growing sense of depression in his own life and current situation. Yet, in the present work, Picasso has seemingly removed this nude figure from any contextual or narrative setting; her identity is enigmatic, her impassive expression inscrutable. As Pierre Daix described the works of this 1903 Barcelona period, ‘His work became finer and stronger. His blues deepened, the figures went through stages of undress to stand revealed in all their expressive nudity’ (Daix, quoted in P. Daix & G. Boudaille, Picasso, The Blue and Rose Periods: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1900-1906, London, 1967, p. 218). In this way, this figure transcends the time of its creation to become a singular evocation of humanity that defines the artist’s later Blue Period works, as he mined the depths of human sentiment and emotion to create works that induce powerful waves of compassion.
Acquired by the Salon Bollag, Femme accroupie was lent to the 1932 Zurich Kunsthaus for Picasso’s first major museum exhibition. Held in the autumn of 1932, this show followed the large exhibition that had been held in Paris, at the Galerie Georges Petit earlier in the year; indeed, over half of the paintings from Paris travelled to Zurich, where they were joined by forty-three new works, and an array of works on paper. This was a landmark moment in the life and career of Picasso. Having turned fifty the previous year, the artist was well aware of his growing age, and was insistent that the retrospective look to the future rather than canonise his past. He was intricately involved with the hang of the exhibition in Paris, choosing not to display his works chronologically, by period, but instead mixing styles and subjects together. Though he was not as directly involved with the curation of the Zurich exhibition, he travelled there with his wife Olga and son Paulo at the beginning of September, a few days before the opening, to oversee the final preparations. These two successive exhibitions saw the artist’s fame reach an unprecedented level. Regarded as one of the greatest living artists, Picasso was celebrated the world over, the astonishing diversity, power and innovation of his life’s work displayed for all to see.