.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The present work was executed while Picasso was staying in the Villa les Sables in Juan-les-Pins, near Cannes, in July 1920. Picasso and Olga had left Paris for the riviera in mid-June and had stayed first at Saint-Raphaël, to the South-West of Cannes. These early stages of Picasso's neo-classicism resulted in some of his most expressive and innovative work and the rich celebration of sun and water in Trois baigneuses, Juan-les-Pins attests to a happy and harmonious time in his marriage to Olga.
Related to a series of nineteen pencil drawings, pastels and oils depicting nudes on the beach (The Picasso Project (ed.), op. cit., nos. 20-269 to 20-276 and 20-381-20-389), Trois baigneuses, Juan-les-Pins clearly owes a debt to classical statuary. The sculptural, volumetric forms are reminiscent of the drawings of seated nudes executed in Paris earlier in the year, but Picasso's simplistic use of line and form foreshadows the monumental Neoclassical figures he was to explore back in Paris in the autumn of 1920 and the winter of 1921. In fact, the graceful sense of movement of the figures in Trois baigneuses, Juan-les-Pins anticipates the iconic Deux femmes courant sur la plage (La course) (Musée Picasso, Paris; Z.IV 380), painted in Dinard in 1922.
While many of the works in this series of bathers are frivolous, the interplay of line and form in the present work and the linear relationship between the landscape and the separate figure elements create a refined, harmonious composition that is more analogous to the most dramatic work from the group, Trois baigneuses (Z.IV 169; fig. 1). The elegant movement of the swimmer in the present work, surrounded by a soft blue, contrasts the static, more solid poses of the foreground figures, and again recalls the oil with its large figure running towards the sea in the background. In its powerful yet lyrical forms and its delicate use of line and colour, Trois baigneuses, Juan-les-Pins is amongst the artist's most expressive and elegant works of this series.
Related to a series of nineteen pencil drawings, pastels and oils depicting nudes on the beach (The Picasso Project (ed.), op. cit., nos. 20-269 to 20-276 and 20-381-20-389), Trois baigneuses, Juan-les-Pins clearly owes a debt to classical statuary. The sculptural, volumetric forms are reminiscent of the drawings of seated nudes executed in Paris earlier in the year, but Picasso's simplistic use of line and form foreshadows the monumental Neoclassical figures he was to explore back in Paris in the autumn of 1920 and the winter of 1921. In fact, the graceful sense of movement of the figures in Trois baigneuses, Juan-les-Pins anticipates the iconic Deux femmes courant sur la plage (La course) (Musée Picasso, Paris; Z.IV 380), painted in Dinard in 1922.
While many of the works in this series of bathers are frivolous, the interplay of line and form in the present work and the linear relationship between the landscape and the separate figure elements create a refined, harmonious composition that is more analogous to the most dramatic work from the group, Trois baigneuses (Z.IV 169; fig. 1). The elegant movement of the swimmer in the present work, surrounded by a soft blue, contrasts the static, more solid poses of the foreground figures, and again recalls the oil with its large figure running towards the sea in the background. In its powerful yet lyrical forms and its delicate use of line and colour, Trois baigneuses, Juan-les-Pins is amongst the artist's most expressive and elegant works of this series.