Pablo Picasso, Femme, Peintre, Modele, 1953-54
Published in Sotheby’s London: Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale Auction Catalogue, February 2011
Femme, Peintre et Modèle is an exquiste illustration of Picasso’s incredible talent for draughtsmanship and the intensity of emotion with which he created the famous series of drawings in the winter of 1953-54, of which the present work is one.
Writing about this period, Marie-Laurencin Bernadac observed: ‘Between 18th November 1953 and 3rd February 1954, Picasso shut himself away in the deserted villa and produced at a dizzying pace 180 drawings which have as their central theme the painter and his model. Some of them additionally summon up and incorporate themes from the past: the circus, clowns acrobats and monkeys. Others anticipate the future: masks, old age, eroticism, jokes at the expense of the painter’s trade, the comedy of the art milieu (Late Picasso, Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings and Prints 1953-1972, The Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 51).
