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Lot Essay
' To me there is no past or future in art. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was’. (Picasso, quoted in: Ashton, p. 4).
Throughout his career Picasso made works in response to the great art of the past. Describing his approach to his artistic predecessors he said: ‘I have a horror of copying myself. But when I am shown a portfolio of old drawings, for instance, I have no qualms about taking anything I want from them.’ (Picasso, in conversation with C. Zervos, 1935, quoted in: Ashton, p. 10). This sustained dialogue with the past reached its zenith in the 1950’s, when Picasso devoted himself in painting, sculpture and print to reworking masterpieces by artists as diverse as Cranach, Velásquez, Delacroix and Manet.
Explaining the genesis of Picasso’s great linocut Buste de Femme d’après Cranach le Jeune, Picasso’s dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler said: ‘One of Picasso’s notable characteristics was his need to transform existing works of art, to compose “variations on a theme”, as it were. His point of departure was often simply a reproduction in a book; or even a postcard sent by myself, such as Cranach the Younger’s Portrait of a Woman [1564] in Vienna, which became his first linocut in colour. Among other things, what struck him in particular about this painting was the way the woman’s shadow ‘rhymes’ with the upper part of her body... This need to transform was certainly an important characteristic of Picasso’s genius.’ (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, ‘Introduction: A Free Man’, in: Penrose/ Golding, p. 8-9)
Picasso had made a preparatory linocut (cf. Baer 1052) after this postcard the day before executing Buste de Femme. This preliminary work, printed in black from one block, follows Cranach’s composition closely - the young girl is depicted in three-quarter profile and faces in the same direction as the painting, requiring Picasso to reverse the image in the cutting. The effect is somewhat laboured, and when Picasso revisited the subject again the following day, he abandoned this creative hindrance, this time cutting the subject freely and adapting Cranach’s composition in a much more spontaneous way. The result is a tour de force¬ of printmaking: with fluid cuts of the linocut gouge and the overprinting of bright, flat colour from five separate blocks, Picasso amplified what he had described to Kahnweiler as the painting’s internal 'rhymes’. Flattening the pictorial space, the bulging shadow on the girl’s right now merges with the undulating shape of her black bodice and shoulders, themselves echoed in the loops of the gold chain and hair net, and by the curved strokes in the background. The girl’s features are playfully distorted, so that we seem to see her from the front and in full profile simultaneously.
What Picasso described to André Malraux as his desire to ‘paint against the canvases that are important to me…that’s painting: for a painter it means wrestling with painting’. (A. Malraux, Picasso’s Mask, 1976, p. 118), also resonates with the iconoclastic transformation of Cranach’s delicate portrait into an exuberant display of colour and rhythmic patterns in this most layered and painterly of all his prints.
Impressions of Buste de Femme d’après Cranach le Jeune can vary considerably in quality and condition. The colours on this superb impression are exceptionally vivid and well preserved. In addition, the sheet has never been cleaned and retains the lively texture of the printed surface.
Literature:
D. Ashton, Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views, London, 1972.
R. Penrose and J. Golding ( eds.), Picasso 1881/1973, London 1973.
A. Malraux, Picasso’s Mask, 1976, p. 118.
D. Giraudy/D. Bourgois, Picasso Linograveur, Musée Picasso, Antibes (at al.) (exh. cat.), 1988-89.
P. Elliott, Picasso on Paper, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (exh. cat.), 2007, no. 77 (another impression illustrated).
C. Riopelle/ A. Robbins, Picasso: Challenging the Past, National Gallery, London (exh. cat.), 2009, no. 37 (another impression illustrated).
Throughout his career Picasso made works in response to the great art of the past. Describing his approach to his artistic predecessors he said: ‘I have a horror of copying myself. But when I am shown a portfolio of old drawings, for instance, I have no qualms about taking anything I want from them.’ (Picasso, in conversation with C. Zervos, 1935, quoted in: Ashton, p. 10). This sustained dialogue with the past reached its zenith in the 1950’s, when Picasso devoted himself in painting, sculpture and print to reworking masterpieces by artists as diverse as Cranach, Velásquez, Delacroix and Manet.
Explaining the genesis of Picasso’s great linocut Buste de Femme d’après Cranach le Jeune, Picasso’s dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler said: ‘One of Picasso’s notable characteristics was his need to transform existing works of art, to compose “variations on a theme”, as it were. His point of departure was often simply a reproduction in a book; or even a postcard sent by myself, such as Cranach the Younger’s Portrait of a Woman [1564] in Vienna, which became his first linocut in colour. Among other things, what struck him in particular about this painting was the way the woman’s shadow ‘rhymes’ with the upper part of her body... This need to transform was certainly an important characteristic of Picasso’s genius.’ (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, ‘Introduction: A Free Man’, in: Penrose/ Golding, p. 8-9)
Picasso had made a preparatory linocut (cf. Baer 1052) after this postcard the day before executing Buste de Femme. This preliminary work, printed in black from one block, follows Cranach’s composition closely - the young girl is depicted in three-quarter profile and faces in the same direction as the painting, requiring Picasso to reverse the image in the cutting. The effect is somewhat laboured, and when Picasso revisited the subject again the following day, he abandoned this creative hindrance, this time cutting the subject freely and adapting Cranach’s composition in a much more spontaneous way. The result is a tour de force¬ of printmaking: with fluid cuts of the linocut gouge and the overprinting of bright, flat colour from five separate blocks, Picasso amplified what he had described to Kahnweiler as the painting’s internal 'rhymes’. Flattening the pictorial space, the bulging shadow on the girl’s right now merges with the undulating shape of her black bodice and shoulders, themselves echoed in the loops of the gold chain and hair net, and by the curved strokes in the background. The girl’s features are playfully distorted, so that we seem to see her from the front and in full profile simultaneously.
What Picasso described to André Malraux as his desire to ‘paint against the canvases that are important to me…that’s painting: for a painter it means wrestling with painting’. (A. Malraux, Picasso’s Mask, 1976, p. 118), also resonates with the iconoclastic transformation of Cranach’s delicate portrait into an exuberant display of colour and rhythmic patterns in this most layered and painterly of all his prints.
Impressions of Buste de Femme d’après Cranach le Jeune can vary considerably in quality and condition. The colours on this superb impression are exceptionally vivid and well preserved. In addition, the sheet has never been cleaned and retains the lively texture of the printed surface.
Literature:
D. Ashton, Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views, London, 1972.
R. Penrose and J. Golding ( eds.), Picasso 1881/1973, London 1973.
A. Malraux, Picasso’s Mask, 1976, p. 118.
D. Giraudy/D. Bourgois, Picasso Linograveur, Musée Picasso, Antibes (at al.) (exh. cat.), 1988-89.
P. Elliott, Picasso on Paper, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (exh. cat.), 2007, no. 77 (another impression illustrated).
C. Riopelle/ A. Robbins, Picasso: Challenging the Past, National Gallery, London (exh. cat.), 2009, no. 37 (another impression illustrated).