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拍品专文
Alongside the iconic series of majestic, searingly coloured, powerful portraits of Dora Maar and Marie-Thérèse Walter that Pablo Picasso painted in the opening weeks of 1938, he also made a number of simple, still-life scenes that feature, as in Nature morte, fruits et pot, a solitary jug accompanied by one or more apples. This was a time of feverish creation in Picasso’s life. Amidst the ever-worsening political crises that plagued Europe—Picasso’s native Spain was consumed by the Civil War, meanwhile France, his adopted home, was also sliding ever closer to war—he worked at an astonishing, near confounding pace, constantly switching between styles, subjects and his two muses of the time, Maar and Walter. Together these paintings, infused with rich colour and dominated by curving, sensuous lines, show no sign of the angst of the times. Instead they embody a blissful sense of escapism, an embrace of life in its simplest, everyday form.
At the time that he painted the present work, Picasso was living between his studio in Paris and Le Tremblay-sur-Mauldre, near Versailles. In the autumn of 1936 Picasso had been forced to give up his beloved château at Boisgeloup as part of the separation agreement he had come to with his wife Olga. In need of another retreat away from the cosmopolitan world of Paris and heeding to Walter’s wish to live in the countryside, the art dealer Amboise Vollard offered Picasso the use of an old farmhouse. With Walter and their young daughter Maya settled there, Picasso divided his time between Paris, where he spent the week with Dora Maar, and Le Tremblay, where he spent the weekend ensconced in family life, living a contented domestic idyll. Characterised by an atmosphere of tranquil, rural charm, his still-lifes, including Nature morte, fruits et pot encapsulate Picasso’s desire to forget the world around him and instead indulge in the simple, unchanging pleasures of life.
For Picasso, painting, particularly the genre of still life had always been deeply autobiographical. ‘I paint the way some people write their autobiography’, he once declared. ‘The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal, and as such they are valid’ (Picasso, quoted in F. Gilot & C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 123). In the early 1930s, at the peak of his passionate but secret affair with Marie-Thérèse, Picasso had painted vibrant still-lifes that are steeped in eroticism. Ripe fruit and exaggeratedly anthropomorphised objects depicted with bold colour and generous brushstrokes served as thinly veiled stand-ins for the sensual undulating curves and youthful vitality of his young muse.
In Nature morte, fruits et pot, the same curvilinear language can be seen; the apples and undulating, volumetric form of the painted jug reflecting the female form. Indeed, even the dark tabletop on which these objects stand sensuously curves across the width of the canvas. ‘Her forms were handsomely sculptural, with a fullness of volume and a purity of line that gave her body and her face an extraordinary perfection’, Françoise Gilot described. ‘To the extent that nature offers ideas or stimuli to an artist, there are some forms that are closer than others to any artist's own aesthetic and thus serve as a springboard for his imagination. Marie-Thérèse brought a great deal to Pablo in the sense that her physical form demanded recognition. She was a magnificent model’ (F. Gilot, ibid., pp. 241-242).
At the time that he painted the present work, Picasso was living between his studio in Paris and Le Tremblay-sur-Mauldre, near Versailles. In the autumn of 1936 Picasso had been forced to give up his beloved château at Boisgeloup as part of the separation agreement he had come to with his wife Olga. In need of another retreat away from the cosmopolitan world of Paris and heeding to Walter’s wish to live in the countryside, the art dealer Amboise Vollard offered Picasso the use of an old farmhouse. With Walter and their young daughter Maya settled there, Picasso divided his time between Paris, where he spent the week with Dora Maar, and Le Tremblay, where he spent the weekend ensconced in family life, living a contented domestic idyll. Characterised by an atmosphere of tranquil, rural charm, his still-lifes, including Nature morte, fruits et pot encapsulate Picasso’s desire to forget the world around him and instead indulge in the simple, unchanging pleasures of life.
For Picasso, painting, particularly the genre of still life had always been deeply autobiographical. ‘I paint the way some people write their autobiography’, he once declared. ‘The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal, and as such they are valid’ (Picasso, quoted in F. Gilot & C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 123). In the early 1930s, at the peak of his passionate but secret affair with Marie-Thérèse, Picasso had painted vibrant still-lifes that are steeped in eroticism. Ripe fruit and exaggeratedly anthropomorphised objects depicted with bold colour and generous brushstrokes served as thinly veiled stand-ins for the sensual undulating curves and youthful vitality of his young muse.
In Nature morte, fruits et pot, the same curvilinear language can be seen; the apples and undulating, volumetric form of the painted jug reflecting the female form. Indeed, even the dark tabletop on which these objects stand sensuously curves across the width of the canvas. ‘Her forms were handsomely sculptural, with a fullness of volume and a purity of line that gave her body and her face an extraordinary perfection’, Françoise Gilot described. ‘To the extent that nature offers ideas or stimuli to an artist, there are some forms that are closer than others to any artist's own aesthetic and thus serve as a springboard for his imagination. Marie-Thérèse brought a great deal to Pablo in the sense that her physical form demanded recognition. She was a magnificent model’ (F. Gilot, ibid., pp. 241-242).