Lot Essay
The juxtapostion of two virtually identical female figures is a persistent theme in Picasso's work and responsible for some of his most powerful compositions.
The naked figure on the left of Nu debout et femme assise is startlingly similar in stance and expression to the similarly placed nude en profil in the monumental Deux nues of 1906 (Zervos I, no. 366,Museum of Modern Art, New York), even the hairline, pursed lips and quizzical right eye are virtually identical.
The mirror-image aspect of Nu debout et femme assise reprises the defiantly histrionic double portait of Marie-Thérèse, Femme devant un miroir of 1932 (Zervos VII, no. 379, Museum of Modern Art, New York), especially the outstretched arm which connects the two figures.
Picasso was consistently self-referential as well as constantly autobiographical, and the level of irony in this work could not be higher. In September of 1939 his former mistress (and mother of his daughter Maya) and his new lover, photographer Dora Maar, had just become aware of each other's existence. In fact, when this was painted in Royan, Picasso and Dora Maar were living together at the Hôtel du Tigre but he installed Marie-Thérèse and Maya not far away at the Villa Gerbier de Joncs. Just a few months earlier he had painted, on the same day, identical portraits of each woman reclining on a couch (Zervos IX, nos. 252 and 253), although Dora Maar is placed in a sumptuous interior while Marie-Thérèse languishes in what appears to be a bare cell.
Nu debout et femme assise seems to be a synthesis of these two works with one woman hailing (or acknowledging? or saying goodbye to?) the other. As in the reclining portrait of Marie-Thérèse, the room is cell-like but the identity of the models is unclear. Is it Marie-Thérèse, naked and abandoned, who hails her enthroned successor, who is clothed and colorful, basking in the artist's attention or conversely, does the seated, domesticated, maternal Marie-Thérèse humbly acknowledge that her former lover is now being inspired by the unclothed charms of the darker, more angular (and decidedly slimmer) Dora Maar?
The naked figure on the left of Nu debout et femme assise is startlingly similar in stance and expression to the similarly placed nude en profil in the monumental Deux nues of 1906 (Zervos I, no. 366,Museum of Modern Art, New York), even the hairline, pursed lips and quizzical right eye are virtually identical.
The mirror-image aspect of Nu debout et femme assise reprises the defiantly histrionic double portait of Marie-Thérèse, Femme devant un miroir of 1932 (Zervos VII, no. 379, Museum of Modern Art, New York), especially the outstretched arm which connects the two figures.
Picasso was consistently self-referential as well as constantly autobiographical, and the level of irony in this work could not be higher. In September of 1939 his former mistress (and mother of his daughter Maya) and his new lover, photographer Dora Maar, had just become aware of each other's existence. In fact, when this was painted in Royan, Picasso and Dora Maar were living together at the Hôtel du Tigre but he installed Marie-Thérèse and Maya not far away at the Villa Gerbier de Joncs. Just a few months earlier he had painted, on the same day, identical portraits of each woman reclining on a couch (Zervos IX, nos. 252 and 253), although Dora Maar is placed in a sumptuous interior while Marie-Thérèse languishes in what appears to be a bare cell.
Nu debout et femme assise seems to be a synthesis of these two works with one woman hailing (or acknowledging? or saying goodbye to?) the other. As in the reclining portrait of Marie-Thérèse, the room is cell-like but the identity of the models is unclear. Is it Marie-Thérèse, naked and abandoned, who hails her enthroned successor, who is clothed and colorful, basking in the artist's attention or conversely, does the seated, domesticated, maternal Marie-Thérèse humbly acknowledge that her former lover is now being inspired by the unclothed charms of the darker, more angular (and decidedly slimmer) Dora Maar?