Tête de faune

‘Painting is poetry and is always written in verse with plastic rhymes, never in prose,’ Picasso told Françoise Gilot, his new muse, around the time he created the present work (quoted in F. Gilot & C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 120). In August 1946, when travelling through the South of France with Françoise Gilot, the artist met Romuald Dor de la Souchère, the curator of the Antibes museum, housed in the Château Grimaldi, who offered the artist to set his studio there. Once installed, Picasso worked intensively for two months, from September to November, and created several works, including paintings and drawings. Shortly after the artist’s return to Paris, the Château was renamed the Musée Picasso, the first to be ever dedicated to the artist.

The main themes of the works Picasso created during his stay in Antibes’ ancient castle, which became known as the Antipolis series, after the town’s ancient Greek name, are of mythological and pastoral inspiration. Satyrs, centaurs, nymphs and idyllic animals inhabit a strange linear Arcadia in which flat, light colours fill in the rhythmic intervals in a new soft and tender style. This subject matter embodies Picasso's exhilaration and excitement over his new love, impending fatherhood (Gilot became pregnant in August), and the regained freedom after the war years, forgotten in the warmth and light of the Mediterranean. His paintings and drawings from this period combine the classical Mediterranean tradition with a new vision, both childlike and complex.