Lot Essay
"I have less and less time, and I have more and more to say." (M. L. Bernadac, exh. cat., Late Picasso, Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 85). This statement by Picasso informed his late style, when a sense of urgency and a tendency toward simplification accounted for the prodigious output seen at the end of his life. The vitality of his work and the formidable productivity in his final years were due, in part, to his adoption of a system of codified signs that allowed him to summarize his subjects. As Picasso explained "I want to say the nude; I don't want to make a nude like a nude; I just want to say breast, say foot, to say hand, belly--to find a way to say it and that's enough." (ibid, p. 85). The reduction of his compositions to a visual shorthand and the deliberately sketchy, spontaneous aesthetic approach came to be the defining features of Picasso's late style, as did certain recurring archetypes, among which the female nude figured most prominently.
Femme au chapeau assise, most likely modeled after Jacqueline, demonstrates the repertoire of signs that composed this late-style shorthand--a swirl for an ear, a curved line for an arm, hairpin eyes, and fan-like hands--while the frantic notations of the brush which emanate outward from the figure impart a vitality and zeal characteristic of his final canvases. The blatant portrayal of woman as sexual being corresponds to the increasing eroticism of his late paintings and the continued presentation of woman as "the object of desire and the eternal subject of painting" (ibid, p. 80).
In 1961, Pablo Picasso moved to a hillside villa in Mougins, where he worked and lived with his wife, Jacqueline Roque, for the remainder of his life. In 1973, just after the artist's death, an exhibition of the 201 paintings which he had completed in the previous two years was held in Avignon at the Palais du Papes. Included in the exhibition, Femme au chapeau assise exemplifies the vigorous brushstrokes, vibrant color, schematic style and strong sexual overtones characteristic of his final paintings.
Femme au chapeau assise, most likely modeled after Jacqueline, demonstrates the repertoire of signs that composed this late-style shorthand--a swirl for an ear, a curved line for an arm, hairpin eyes, and fan-like hands--while the frantic notations of the brush which emanate outward from the figure impart a vitality and zeal characteristic of his final canvases. The blatant portrayal of woman as sexual being corresponds to the increasing eroticism of his late paintings and the continued presentation of woman as "the object of desire and the eternal subject of painting" (ibid, p. 80).
In 1961, Pablo Picasso moved to a hillside villa in Mougins, where he worked and lived with his wife, Jacqueline Roque, for the remainder of his life. In 1973, just after the artist's death, an exhibition of the 201 paintings which he had completed in the previous two years was held in Avignon at the Palais du Papes. Included in the exhibition, Femme au chapeau assise exemplifies the vigorous brushstrokes, vibrant color, schematic style and strong sexual overtones characteristic of his final paintings.