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Lot Essay
Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
This tender, intimate depiction of two young women, both bearing the unmistakable profile of Picasso’s young lover of the time, is firmly in the tradition of ancient myths and deities, fauns and satyrs that appeared frequently in Picasso's art, starting with his classical period in the late 1910s and 1920s. They tended to surface at times of domestic happiness, and early 1933 was just such a time. His clandestine affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter was at its most intense, providing as it did a welcome distraction to the brooding presence of his wife, Olga. The situation prompted one of those bursts of creativity which punctuate Picasso’s career. On this occasion, it was monotype—a mercurial technique involving painting with viscous inks on a shiny surface, much favored by Edgar Degas a generation before, which became the focus of his almost maniacal energy. The experiments began slowly in summer 1932 at the recently purchased Château Boisgeloup near Gisors, but gained momentum shortly after the turn of the year in Paris, where the results were photographed in situ by Brassaï (see photo). Between January and March 1933, he created over 120 works, of which twelve were produced on a single day.
Of the corpus he made in early 1933 fully half of them depict a flutist and reclining woman, in varying degrees of abstraction. The present example is a highlight of a remarkable series of no fewer than forty-six depictions of the subject, but rather than seeing them as discrete, separate works these are in fact one composition gradually modified and transformed over forty-six stages, something only possible with monotype. After each printing Picasso drew a new version over the ghostly traces of the previous one.
Picasso employed the technique in tandem with drypoint and etching, transferring images and ideas from one to the other and back again, every stage an evolution. Here Picasso used one side of a shiny copper printing plate for the monotypes, whilst on the reverse he executed a drypoint version of the same composition. Clearly these agile jumps between monotype and etching or monotype and drypoint must have inspired him, such was the prodigious output.
As with other creative storms—such as his infatuation with linocut 25 years later—his passion for the technique soon burned itself out. Despite his obvious facility with the medium, monotypes had virtually disappeared from his repertoire by the summer, rarely to return. Few of these extraordinary works remain in private hands.
This tender, intimate depiction of two young women, both bearing the unmistakable profile of Picasso’s young lover of the time, is firmly in the tradition of ancient myths and deities, fauns and satyrs that appeared frequently in Picasso's art, starting with his classical period in the late 1910s and 1920s. They tended to surface at times of domestic happiness, and early 1933 was just such a time. His clandestine affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter was at its most intense, providing as it did a welcome distraction to the brooding presence of his wife, Olga. The situation prompted one of those bursts of creativity which punctuate Picasso’s career. On this occasion, it was monotype—a mercurial technique involving painting with viscous inks on a shiny surface, much favored by Edgar Degas a generation before, which became the focus of his almost maniacal energy. The experiments began slowly in summer 1932 at the recently purchased Château Boisgeloup near Gisors, but gained momentum shortly after the turn of the year in Paris, where the results were photographed in situ by Brassaï (see photo). Between January and March 1933, he created over 120 works, of which twelve were produced on a single day.
Of the corpus he made in early 1933 fully half of them depict a flutist and reclining woman, in varying degrees of abstraction. The present example is a highlight of a remarkable series of no fewer than forty-six depictions of the subject, but rather than seeing them as discrete, separate works these are in fact one composition gradually modified and transformed over forty-six stages, something only possible with monotype. After each printing Picasso drew a new version over the ghostly traces of the previous one.
Picasso employed the technique in tandem with drypoint and etching, transferring images and ideas from one to the other and back again, every stage an evolution. Here Picasso used one side of a shiny copper printing plate for the monotypes, whilst on the reverse he executed a drypoint version of the same composition. Clearly these agile jumps between monotype and etching or monotype and drypoint must have inspired him, such was the prodigious output.
As with other creative storms—such as his infatuation with linocut 25 years later—his passion for the technique soon burned itself out. Despite his obvious facility with the medium, monotypes had virtually disappeared from his repertoire by the summer, rarely to return. Few of these extraordinary works remain in private hands.