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Lot Essay
When exhibited in 1940 at the Museum of Modern Art, Femme à la guitare was hung alongside eleven other Cubist works on paper by Picasso, displayed as one group. Though distinctly individual, as a series they showed the artist’s working practice through variations on a theme, moving around, through and into his subject, interrogating it with the utmost curiosity. Some display bare outlines, some with highlights of shading, some with several figures or text included. Femme à la guitare, within this group, is a distinctively resolved composition with great technical variety seen through the alternating tempo of its line and a succinctness to the dynamic articulation of its subject.
Femme à la Guitare was drawn in 1912, a pivotal year in both Picasso's career and in his personal life. Picasso's art was undergoing a transformation whereby the analytic cubist style of the past years was evolving into synthetic cubism. As John Richardson explains, 'Analytic cubism permitted the two artists to take things apart: dissect them "with the practiced and methodical hand of a great surgeon" (as Apollinaire said of Picasso)... Synthetic cubism, on the other hand, permitted Picasso and Braque to put things together again, to create images and objects in a revolutionary new way, out of whatever materials they chose' (in A Life of Picasso, 1907-1917: The Painter of Modern Life, London, 1996, vol. 1, p. 106).
The guitar motif provided Picasso with an interesting range of lines, forms and volumes and served as a fertile ground for his cubist investigations. It also had a curvaceous quality that the artist equated with femininity, providing a contrast of line with the angular, planar dissection of other subjects. Picasso had long held a fascination with the instrument, and in 1912 he would create an enormous sheet-metal sculpture in its honour. As Joseph Palau I Fabre observes: 'The year 1912 is without doubt, after 1907, the most significant in the history of modern art so far. Its debut, for want of a better term, was marked by Picasso’s famous El Guitarrot…' (J Palau i Fabre, Picasso Cubism, New York, 1990, p. 240)
Picasso would continue to deconstruct the guitar almost obsessively throughout 1912. In Femme à la Guitare, we see just a small hint as to the guitar’s presence, referred to in the swirling line at the lower edge with strings extending upward, a sound hole to the centre and tiny fingers suggested towards the right grasping the fretboard. Reminiscent of the painting Ma jolie (Zervos, vol. II*, no. 244) which was painted over the Winter of 1911-1912 and exhibited in the same exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1940, the figure absorbs the predominance of space, the words ‘MA JOLIE’ inscribed at the lower edge referring to his new love at that time Marcelle Humbert (also known as Eva Gouel). The guitar that serves as the punctum to enliven this composition, introducing a new movement, a point of contrast with his sitter.
EXCEPTIONAL WORKS FROM THE TRITON COLLECTION FOUNDATION
by Jussi Pylkkänen, Global President, Christie’s
Christie’s is honoured to be offering for sale a significant group of works from the Triton Collection Foundation, which continues to evolve and grow in new areas. The last major de-acquisition from the collection took place in our salerooms in Paris in March 2015 when the Exceptional Works on Paper from the Triton Collection Foundation sale elicited huge interest from collectors around the globe: Those works, which had been collected by Triton’s Founders over many years, saw spectacular prices for top quality pieces, such as Camille Pissarro’s Paysannes travaillant dans les champs, Pontoise, which sold for €1,381,500 against a pre-sale estimate of €250,000-350,000, further to numerous world records achieved for works on paper by artists such as Claude-Emile Schuffenecker, Paul-Elie Ranson and Frédéric Bazille. This strong market reaction is in recognition of the eye with which they had originally been selected.
Over many years the Foundation has considered public access to its works as a fundamental pillar of its collecting ethos. A continuous dialogue with curators around the world and an extensive loan programme to over seventy museums globally has made this dream a reality and benefited exhibitions at the likes of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, the Seoul Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art. These collaborations have ensured that an international audience has consistently had the opportunity to appreciate the quality and breadth of the collection, which stretches from classic Impressionism through to Surrealism and beyond to Post-War work by the major American artists. The sales of the major works in this season’s auctions will give the opportunity to the Foundation to continue its excellent, philanthropic work.
The group of works being sold across our Impressionist sales here in London includes seminal examples of French Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and the European avant-garde, from Claude Monet’s luminous Vétheuil of 1879 to Jan Toorop’s resonating symbolist 1902 composition, Faith and Reward. Each of these works has been bought with a very discerning eye, and often the provenances of the pieces are as noble as the works themselves. We wish the Foundation great success with these sales as well as their future projects.
Femme à la Guitare was drawn in 1912, a pivotal year in both Picasso's career and in his personal life. Picasso's art was undergoing a transformation whereby the analytic cubist style of the past years was evolving into synthetic cubism. As John Richardson explains, 'Analytic cubism permitted the two artists to take things apart: dissect them "with the practiced and methodical hand of a great surgeon" (as Apollinaire said of Picasso)... Synthetic cubism, on the other hand, permitted Picasso and Braque to put things together again, to create images and objects in a revolutionary new way, out of whatever materials they chose' (in A Life of Picasso, 1907-1917: The Painter of Modern Life, London, 1996, vol. 1, p. 106).
The guitar motif provided Picasso with an interesting range of lines, forms and volumes and served as a fertile ground for his cubist investigations. It also had a curvaceous quality that the artist equated with femininity, providing a contrast of line with the angular, planar dissection of other subjects. Picasso had long held a fascination with the instrument, and in 1912 he would create an enormous sheet-metal sculpture in its honour. As Joseph Palau I Fabre observes: 'The year 1912 is without doubt, after 1907, the most significant in the history of modern art so far. Its debut, for want of a better term, was marked by Picasso’s famous El Guitarrot…' (J Palau i Fabre, Picasso Cubism, New York, 1990, p. 240)
Picasso would continue to deconstruct the guitar almost obsessively throughout 1912. In Femme à la Guitare, we see just a small hint as to the guitar’s presence, referred to in the swirling line at the lower edge with strings extending upward, a sound hole to the centre and tiny fingers suggested towards the right grasping the fretboard. Reminiscent of the painting Ma jolie (Zervos, vol. II*, no. 244) which was painted over the Winter of 1911-1912 and exhibited in the same exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1940, the figure absorbs the predominance of space, the words ‘MA JOLIE’ inscribed at the lower edge referring to his new love at that time Marcelle Humbert (also known as Eva Gouel). The guitar that serves as the punctum to enliven this composition, introducing a new movement, a point of contrast with his sitter.
EXCEPTIONAL WORKS FROM THE TRITON COLLECTION FOUNDATION
by Jussi Pylkkänen, Global President, Christie’s
Christie’s is honoured to be offering for sale a significant group of works from the Triton Collection Foundation, which continues to evolve and grow in new areas. The last major de-acquisition from the collection took place in our salerooms in Paris in March 2015 when the Exceptional Works on Paper from the Triton Collection Foundation sale elicited huge interest from collectors around the globe: Those works, which had been collected by Triton’s Founders over many years, saw spectacular prices for top quality pieces, such as Camille Pissarro’s Paysannes travaillant dans les champs, Pontoise, which sold for €1,381,500 against a pre-sale estimate of €250,000-350,000, further to numerous world records achieved for works on paper by artists such as Claude-Emile Schuffenecker, Paul-Elie Ranson and Frédéric Bazille. This strong market reaction is in recognition of the eye with which they had originally been selected.
Over many years the Foundation has considered public access to its works as a fundamental pillar of its collecting ethos. A continuous dialogue with curators around the world and an extensive loan programme to over seventy museums globally has made this dream a reality and benefited exhibitions at the likes of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, the Seoul Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art. These collaborations have ensured that an international audience has consistently had the opportunity to appreciate the quality and breadth of the collection, which stretches from classic Impressionism through to Surrealism and beyond to Post-War work by the major American artists. The sales of the major works in this season’s auctions will give the opportunity to the Foundation to continue its excellent, philanthropic work.
The group of works being sold across our Impressionist sales here in London includes seminal examples of French Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and the European avant-garde, from Claude Monet’s luminous Vétheuil of 1879 to Jan Toorop’s resonating symbolist 1902 composition, Faith and Reward. Each of these works has been bought with a very discerning eye, and often the provenances of the pieces are as noble as the works themselves. We wish the Foundation great success with these sales as well as their future projects.