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Lot Essay
In April-May 1925, Picasso moved his family to Monte Carlo, where Sergei Diaghilev was presenting a new performance from the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev and Picasso worked together extensively, not least on the set and costume design for Parade in 1917, which would greatly influence his artistic output during that period. The experimental ballet Parade, featuring Erik Satie’s music, travelled to Rome, Madrid and Barcelona, and during its production, Picasso fell in love with prima ballerina Olga Khoklova.
In the intervening years, Picasso continued his work with Diaghilev until 1924; the 1925 spring trip to Monte Carlo was thus the first occasion upon which Picasso had been free to explore the theme of the dancer without any professional obligation. Picasso appears to have reveled in the chance to commit to paper these naturalistic images, capturing their movements, their stature, their poise with a grace that itself echoes the dancers themselves. The fact that Picasso chose to depict the dancers through these naturalistic means, rather than with recourse to photography, shows an involvement in the moment, a love of the world of dance. There is a discreet classicism to the ballet dancers, who appear here to echo some of the characters who had featured in Picasso's Rose Period pictures of acrobats and the circus two decades earlier. Like them, they have here been imbued with a timelessness that is classicizing, relating to the rappel à l'ordre that came in the wake of the chaos of the First World War. Here, these avant-garde ballet dancers have been rendered with a stillness and mood that recalls ancient art as well as the modern world.
“Since 1916, [Picasso] had been working for the theatre, living in a world of ballet dancers and musicians, unable to escape from it all even in his own home, where he was surrounded by the tutus and ballet shoes of his wife,” explains Douglas Cooper. “By 1925 Picasso was tired of his long association with the ballet, his marriage had become a source of irritation to him, he had found new artistic interest, and he was determined to free himself from the claims of the theatre. In April of that year Picasso and Olga paid a last visit to Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo, where he made drawings of elegantly posed dancers as he had done previously. But when he got back to Paris a month later he painted La Danse, a climactic masterpiece in which the elation he had once felt is overlaid with pain, and in which dancing and dancers are treated with bitter mockery. This painting was a true cry from the heart, a passionate and spontaneous outburst which marks the end of Picasso’s interest in the ballet for twenty years”(op. cit., p. 67).
In the intervening years, Picasso continued his work with Diaghilev until 1924; the 1925 spring trip to Monte Carlo was thus the first occasion upon which Picasso had been free to explore the theme of the dancer without any professional obligation. Picasso appears to have reveled in the chance to commit to paper these naturalistic images, capturing their movements, their stature, their poise with a grace that itself echoes the dancers themselves. The fact that Picasso chose to depict the dancers through these naturalistic means, rather than with recourse to photography, shows an involvement in the moment, a love of the world of dance. There is a discreet classicism to the ballet dancers, who appear here to echo some of the characters who had featured in Picasso's Rose Period pictures of acrobats and the circus two decades earlier. Like them, they have here been imbued with a timelessness that is classicizing, relating to the rappel à l'ordre that came in the wake of the chaos of the First World War. Here, these avant-garde ballet dancers have been rendered with a stillness and mood that recalls ancient art as well as the modern world.
“Since 1916, [Picasso] had been working for the theatre, living in a world of ballet dancers and musicians, unable to escape from it all even in his own home, where he was surrounded by the tutus and ballet shoes of his wife,” explains Douglas Cooper. “By 1925 Picasso was tired of his long association with the ballet, his marriage had become a source of irritation to him, he had found new artistic interest, and he was determined to free himself from the claims of the theatre. In April of that year Picasso and Olga paid a last visit to Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo, where he made drawings of elegantly posed dancers as he had done previously. But when he got back to Paris a month later he painted La Danse, a climactic masterpiece in which the elation he had once felt is overlaid with pain, and in which dancing and dancers are treated with bitter mockery. This painting was a true cry from the heart, a passionate and spontaneous outburst which marks the end of Picasso’s interest in the ballet for twenty years”(op. cit., p. 67).