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Lot Essay
Nu agenouillé et Amour is one of a small series of drawings that Pablo Picasso created in December 1968, exploring the subject of a woman playing with Cupid, shown with his bow and arrow. Nu agenouillé et Amour shows the two figures, with the Cupid bearing a mysterious resemblance to the artist himself with his coal-black eyes, facing each other. The woman's face is shown in a profile that is near classical; meanwhile, her body is generously voluptuous, a vision of womanhood in comparison to the child-like body of the winged cupid with his bow. Looking at the sister pictures, it becomes apparent that the female figure may well be an analogue for Jacqueline, Picasso's second wife and arguably his most important muse, the woman who dominated his life and his art for almost two entire decades.
Nu agenouillé et Amour is a variation of an ancient theme: Venus and Cupid. This has been explored by many artists over the centuries, and so was all the more apt as a subject for Picasso during this period, when he was often looking to the great painters of the past for inspiration, or indeed to enter into a dialogue with them, sometimes one that involved a gleeful degree of iconoclasm. During this time, he took the works of, say, Velazquez, Delacroix and Manet and used them as a springboard for his own creations, resulting in a string of lively new incarnations of their compositions. This was a process that Picasso had already explored even as a teenager in Spain, looking at the works of El Greco and Velazquez alike.
After the Second World War, Picasso began to look at the pictures of Lucas Cranach the Elder, making a series of prints based on the Old Master's own images. He had begun in 1947 with Cranach's David and Bathsheba, an image of which he had been given by the legendary dealer Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler; Picasso produced his own variations on the theme. A couple of years later, he turned to Cranach's various versions of Venus and Cupid, using them as the basis for celebrated prints. Over the years, he would produce his own idiosyncratic responses to a number of Cranach's works, creating enough of a body of work inspired by the older artist that Kahnweiler would help to organise an exhibition in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg in September 1968 entitled Cranach und Picasso. Perhaps it was this exhibition, or the idea behind it, that helped suggest the subject of Venus and Cupid to Picasso later in the year, ushering into existence another series of vigorous, whimsical works showing Venus with the armed Cupid, including Nu agenouillé et Amour.
Nu agenouillé et Amour is a variation of an ancient theme: Venus and Cupid. This has been explored by many artists over the centuries, and so was all the more apt as a subject for Picasso during this period, when he was often looking to the great painters of the past for inspiration, or indeed to enter into a dialogue with them, sometimes one that involved a gleeful degree of iconoclasm. During this time, he took the works of, say, Velazquez, Delacroix and Manet and used them as a springboard for his own creations, resulting in a string of lively new incarnations of their compositions. This was a process that Picasso had already explored even as a teenager in Spain, looking at the works of El Greco and Velazquez alike.
After the Second World War, Picasso began to look at the pictures of Lucas Cranach the Elder, making a series of prints based on the Old Master's own images. He had begun in 1947 with Cranach's David and Bathsheba, an image of which he had been given by the legendary dealer Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler; Picasso produced his own variations on the theme. A couple of years later, he turned to Cranach's various versions of Venus and Cupid, using them as the basis for celebrated prints. Over the years, he would produce his own idiosyncratic responses to a number of Cranach's works, creating enough of a body of work inspired by the older artist that Kahnweiler would help to organise an exhibition in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg in September 1968 entitled Cranach und Picasso. Perhaps it was this exhibition, or the idea behind it, that helped suggest the subject of Venus and Cupid to Picasso later in the year, ushering into existence another series of vigorous, whimsical works showing Venus with the armed Cupid, including Nu agenouillé et Amour.