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拍品专文
These monumental portraits of Françoise Gilot, Picasso's lover and muse for a decade beginning in 1943, are two of the most powerful in Picasso's graphic oeuvre. Gilot, praised by the photographer Brassai for her 'freshness and restless vitality', was the subject of the famous Femme au Fauteuil lithographs executed in 1949, in which Picasso progressively simplified her elegant, aquiline features through progressive re-workings of the lithographic plates.
For Picasso printmaking was a physical process, the struggle with materials an essential part of the creative process. His vigorous, experimental approach led him to many radical departures from traditional printmaking, in which the expressive potential of the plate or stone was stretched to the very limit. In these plates we see his use of sugar-lift aquatint, a technique introduced to him by the master intaglio printer Roger Lacourière in the 1930s. Using ink mixed with soap and sugar, the image is brushed onto the plate, allowed to dry then covered with stopping out varnish. The plate is then immersed in water. As the sugar swells it lifts the varnish, leaving the plate exposed where it had previously been covered by the brush drawing, to be aquatinted and bitten in the normal manner. The technique allows for a painterly effect, creating washes of dappled tone. Picasso oftened combined sugar-lift with hard-ground line etching. However, in L'Egyptienne, he used it exclusively, fully exploiting its rich, tonal potential. Gilot's features are paired down and stylised into broad, inky sweeps, dramatically contrasting with the pitted plate tone of the background. The effect is strikingly beautiful. As Picasso rarely titled his prints, titles have generally been ascribed by dealers and art historians. The name L'Egyptienne was coined by Lacourière's workshop in reference to Gilot's hairstyle, which resembles an Egyptian head-dress. Femme a la Fenetre is a seemingly more prosaic title, however there is an obvious allusion to Francoise's yearning for freedom from the all-consuming relationship with the artist. These great works were to be amongst Picasso's last portraits of Gilot before the relationship floundered in the autumn of 1953.
For Picasso printmaking was a physical process, the struggle with materials an essential part of the creative process. His vigorous, experimental approach led him to many radical departures from traditional printmaking, in which the expressive potential of the plate or stone was stretched to the very limit. In these plates we see his use of sugar-lift aquatint, a technique introduced to him by the master intaglio printer Roger Lacourière in the 1930s. Using ink mixed with soap and sugar, the image is brushed onto the plate, allowed to dry then covered with stopping out varnish. The plate is then immersed in water. As the sugar swells it lifts the varnish, leaving the plate exposed where it had previously been covered by the brush drawing, to be aquatinted and bitten in the normal manner. The technique allows for a painterly effect, creating washes of dappled tone. Picasso oftened combined sugar-lift with hard-ground line etching. However, in L'Egyptienne, he used it exclusively, fully exploiting its rich, tonal potential. Gilot's features are paired down and stylised into broad, inky sweeps, dramatically contrasting with the pitted plate tone of the background. The effect is strikingly beautiful. As Picasso rarely titled his prints, titles have generally been ascribed by dealers and art historians. The name L'Egyptienne was coined by Lacourière's workshop in reference to Gilot's hairstyle, which resembles an Egyptian head-dress. Femme a la Fenetre is a seemingly more prosaic title, however there is an obvious allusion to Francoise's yearning for freedom from the all-consuming relationship with the artist. These great works were to be amongst Picasso's last portraits of Gilot before the relationship floundered in the autumn of 1953.