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Lot Essay
’Most Gauguin-esque of all is the imposing woodcut of her [Fernande]. Picasso hacked away at a plank to produce a rough and ready print as primitive and expressive as anything in Noa-Noa... Picasso has devised a paradoxical image that is of its time yet timeless, primitive yet classical, Spanish yet French, utterly original for all its derivations' (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso - Volume 1: 1881-1906, London, 1992, p. 445).
In May 1906, occasioned by the sale of twenty paintings to the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, Picasso returned to Spain for the first time since his move to France two years earlier. He was accompanied by his lover Fernande Olivier. After a brief sojourn in Barcelona to visit family and friends, the couple retreated to the remote village of Gosól in the Pyrenees mountains. Energised by his new surroundings and free from the distractions of their bohemian life in Paris, Picasso embarked on an intensely creative summer. The nine or ten weeks in Gosól would prove to be a turning point in his evolution as an artist. This rare woodcut, a portrait of Fernande, reflects Picasso's stylistic shift at Gosól away from the delicate stylisation of the Rose Period towards a new 'primitivism', inspired by his study of Iberian and African sculpture at the Louvre and the Museé du Trocadero (see also lots 310 and 311). Although this is the only documented woodcut from the period, three carved wooden portraits of Fernande also survive. Their execution is similarly rough-hewn, recalling the woodcuts and carvings of Paul Gauguin, whom Picasso greatly admired. The turn towards wood as a medium and a printing technique, one Picasso rarely used in the course of his career as a printmaker, may have been prompted by a dearth of material and equipment in the mountains - but also reflects the artist's search at Gosól for a new pictorial language, both raw and monumental. Fernande's features have been distilled to their essence and expressively cut into the unprepared, coarsely grained surface of the block. This process of simplification and reduction (see also lot 305) harks back to Gauguin, and heralds the radical experimentation of the ensuing months following their return to Paris in August, which would culminate in the revolutionary painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907 (MoMA, New York), described by John Richardson as 'the most innovative painting since Giotto' and a pre-cursor of Cubism (J. Richardson, 1992, p. 475).
Picasso printed a very small number of impressions of Buste de jeune femme de trois quarts in 1906 but returned to block in 1933 to personally hand-print two proofs followed by an edition of 15. His approach to printing this edition was experimental, with each variably inked in an almost painterly fashion, producing such radically different results that each impression can be regarded as unique. Some examples are selectively inked, highlighting Fernande's aquiline profile but not the surface of the block. Others are inked lightly, but more consistently, revealing the character of the wood surface but lacking clarity. One impression is printed on a sheet smaller than the block. The present superb example, with wide margins, is richly inked, fully revealing Picasso's expressive cutting and the pitted, grainy materiality of the woodblock.
The hand-printing of his own edition is an anomaly for Picasso, whose customary practice was to delegate the editioning of his prints to professional printers. His creative re-engagement with Buste de jeune femme de trois quarts after almost thirty years suggests that the subject was important to him, a relic perhaps of that momentous summer in Gosól with Fernande.
In May 1906, occasioned by the sale of twenty paintings to the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, Picasso returned to Spain for the first time since his move to France two years earlier. He was accompanied by his lover Fernande Olivier. After a brief sojourn in Barcelona to visit family and friends, the couple retreated to the remote village of Gosól in the Pyrenees mountains. Energised by his new surroundings and free from the distractions of their bohemian life in Paris, Picasso embarked on an intensely creative summer. The nine or ten weeks in Gosól would prove to be a turning point in his evolution as an artist. This rare woodcut, a portrait of Fernande, reflects Picasso's stylistic shift at Gosól away from the delicate stylisation of the Rose Period towards a new 'primitivism', inspired by his study of Iberian and African sculpture at the Louvre and the Museé du Trocadero (see also lots 310 and 311). Although this is the only documented woodcut from the period, three carved wooden portraits of Fernande also survive. Their execution is similarly rough-hewn, recalling the woodcuts and carvings of Paul Gauguin, whom Picasso greatly admired. The turn towards wood as a medium and a printing technique, one Picasso rarely used in the course of his career as a printmaker, may have been prompted by a dearth of material and equipment in the mountains - but also reflects the artist's search at Gosól for a new pictorial language, both raw and monumental. Fernande's features have been distilled to their essence and expressively cut into the unprepared, coarsely grained surface of the block. This process of simplification and reduction (see also lot 305) harks back to Gauguin, and heralds the radical experimentation of the ensuing months following their return to Paris in August, which would culminate in the revolutionary painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907 (MoMA, New York), described by John Richardson as 'the most innovative painting since Giotto' and a pre-cursor of Cubism (J. Richardson, 1992, p. 475).
Picasso printed a very small number of impressions of Buste de jeune femme de trois quarts in 1906 but returned to block in 1933 to personally hand-print two proofs followed by an edition of 15. His approach to printing this edition was experimental, with each variably inked in an almost painterly fashion, producing such radically different results that each impression can be regarded as unique. Some examples are selectively inked, highlighting Fernande's aquiline profile but not the surface of the block. Others are inked lightly, but more consistently, revealing the character of the wood surface but lacking clarity. One impression is printed on a sheet smaller than the block. The present superb example, with wide margins, is richly inked, fully revealing Picasso's expressive cutting and the pitted, grainy materiality of the woodblock.
The hand-printing of his own edition is an anomaly for Picasso, whose customary practice was to delegate the editioning of his prints to professional printers. His creative re-engagement with Buste de jeune femme de trois quarts after almost thirty years suggests that the subject was important to him, a relic perhaps of that momentous summer in Gosól with Fernande.