Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Le faune au soleil

Details
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Le faune au soleil
signed 'Picasso' (upper left)
oil on paper laid down on canvas
25 5/8 x 19 5/8in. (65 x 50cm.)
Painted in Antibes in 1946
Provenance
Galerie Simon, Paris
Perls Gallery, New York
Schlumberger Collection, Paris
Private Collection, New York
Literature
C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1944-1946, vol. 14, Paris 1963, no. 240 (illustrated p. 111).
Exhibited
North Carolina, Raleigh, Look Back: An Exhibition of Cubist Paintings and Sculpture from the Menil Family Collection, June-September 1969.
London, The Arts Council, Picasso in Provence, 1950, no. 4 (illustrated in the catalogue fig. VII, p. 9).

Lot Essay

Executed in the summer of 1946, Le Faune au Soleil is one of a number of joyous works that Picasso painted over the summer that reflect the artist's new found happiness in his relationship with Franoise Gilot.

The present work belongs to a series of paintings and drawings that represent bacchanalian characters. In these scenes of joyous revelry, which in their gaity suggest the carefree days of summer, the centerpiece is often a portrait of Franoise Gilot as a flower. Picasso depicts himself in these paintings in the multiple guise of a centaur, as Pan and as a faun; three alter-egos that are evidently intended to represent sides of his own character as it revolves around the object of his new-found love.

Of all these works on this theme, the present work relates most closely to La femme-fleur that Picasso had painted in the Spring of 1946. In its refined stylisation and in its elegant depiction of the artist metamorphosised into a fictitious alter-ego, it can in many ways be considered a companion piece to this famous portrait of Franoise.

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