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Lot Essay
On 17 February 1901, Picasso's close friend Carlos Casagemas committed suicide at a restaurant in Barcelona, an event which devastated the artist to such a degree that it pushed him into the melancholy of his Blue Period. The significance of this event in Picasso's life can be seen in five oil paintings and numerous drawings he made that year.
The present drawing is a study for La morte (Zervos, vol. I, no. 52), one of two monumental burial scenes painted in Paris that year. Here Picasso shows the shrouded body attended by professional mourners. There are references to classical sacred painting, especially to the works of El Greco, in the placement of the mourners lifting the body. Picasso subsequently simplified the positioning of the figures in the masterpiece of this series, Evocation (The Burial of Casagemas (Zervos, vol. I, no. 55; coll. Muse d'Art Modern de la Ville de Paris) to give greater emphasis to the allegorical figures seen in the upper half of the composition.
The present drawing is a study for La morte (Zervos, vol. I, no. 52), one of two monumental burial scenes painted in Paris that year. Here Picasso shows the shrouded body attended by professional mourners. There are references to classical sacred painting, especially to the works of El Greco, in the placement of the mourners lifting the body. Picasso subsequently simplified the positioning of the figures in the masterpiece of this series, Evocation (The Burial of Casagemas (Zervos, vol. I, no. 55; coll. Muse d'Art Modern de la Ville de Paris) to give greater emphasis to the allegorical figures seen in the upper half of the composition.