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拍品專文
Executed in March 1940, in a period of relative calm before the advance of the German offenisve in May, Buste de Femme is one of Picasso's most abstract distortions of his lover Dora Maar's face.
Painted in subtle shades of grey against a delicate beige background, this portrait of Dora is highly sculptural and like many of Picasso's most extreme abstractions, could actually exist in the three dimensional world. Picasso presents Dora as a construction in three sections. Having elongated her features into a highly unflattering snout that resembles Picasso's afghan hound Kasbec more than it does Dora, her face is balanced on a ballustrade that serves as her mouth and neck behind which her hair falls like a theatrical curtain. This somewhat mechanical construction gives way at the bottom of the canvas to the elegant arcs and soft form of two large and pointed breasts that also act as a sculptural plinth for this remarkable imaginary sculpture.
Remarking on the extremity of his distortions of Dora's face in his work, Picasso stated to Francoise Gillot a few years later: "For years I've painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one." (Francoise Gilot, Life with Picasso, New York 1964, p. 122.)
Painted in subtle shades of grey against a delicate beige background, this portrait of Dora is highly sculptural and like many of Picasso's most extreme abstractions, could actually exist in the three dimensional world. Picasso presents Dora as a construction in three sections. Having elongated her features into a highly unflattering snout that resembles Picasso's afghan hound Kasbec more than it does Dora, her face is balanced on a ballustrade that serves as her mouth and neck behind which her hair falls like a theatrical curtain. This somewhat mechanical construction gives way at the bottom of the canvas to the elegant arcs and soft form of two large and pointed breasts that also act as a sculptural plinth for this remarkable imaginary sculpture.
Remarking on the extremity of his distortions of Dora's face in his work, Picasso stated to Francoise Gillot a few years later: "For years I've painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one." (Francoise Gilot, Life with Picasso, New York 1964, p. 122.)