Lot Essay
Having passed the entrance examinations with prodigious ease, Picasso enrolled in the San Fernando Academy in Madrid in October, 1897 and remained there until June of the following year. He quickly discovered that the traditional teaching structure was hidebound and held little interest for him. Bored with the academic exercises, he began to mingle with the modernist ferment around him, in which art nouveau and symbolism were the latest trends. The rugged and earthy naturalism of his earliest pictures gave way for the first time to an element of stylization that was more received than intuitive. Yet, even if his graphic style shares many of the traits of other young artists of his generation -- for example, the emphasis on curvilinear shapes and a rhythmical undulation of form, with heavy contours -- Picasso nonetheless imprints upon this style his own natural fluency, and we can easily sense the subjective romantic emotions that begin to become apparent during this period.
Picasso's stay in Madrid set the tone for the lean years ahead. Much of the time he was cold, hungry and lonely, and he eventually fell ill with scarlet fever. His lodgings were shared and dingy, and he had no studio, often forcing him to work outdoors or in the street. He frequently drew or painted in the Retiro Park, and under the influence of his friend Santiago Rusinol, depicted scenes that echo daily life in the city, with a dreamy, melancholic tinge, as if he were compelled to create a more tender, sentimental reality than he was at the time actually experiencing. The lovers in the present drawing appear again in the oil painting Couple in the Retiro Park, 1897-1898 (see illustration in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Early Years, 1881-1906, New York, 1991, p. 92). The drawing depicts more generalized landscape forms and has a more spontaneous air that is perhaps more successful than the carefully composed park setting in the oil painting. The overall effect in the drawing almost transcends regional influence and recalls a more international style, such as that practiced by the northerner Edvard Munch, whose work Picasso was unlikely to have encountered at this time. While the typically symbolist dimensions of anxiety and self-absorption are entirely absent here, the scene is no less interesting in the way it projects a youthful expression of the artist's romantic feelings, which contrasts all the more strongly with the deeper, more violent tensions that shaped the artist's life and the content of his art in the years to come.
A photo-certificate from Maya Widmaier Picasso dated paris October 21, 1997 accompanies this drawing.
Picasso's stay in Madrid set the tone for the lean years ahead. Much of the time he was cold, hungry and lonely, and he eventually fell ill with scarlet fever. His lodgings were shared and dingy, and he had no studio, often forcing him to work outdoors or in the street. He frequently drew or painted in the Retiro Park, and under the influence of his friend Santiago Rusinol, depicted scenes that echo daily life in the city, with a dreamy, melancholic tinge, as if he were compelled to create a more tender, sentimental reality than he was at the time actually experiencing. The lovers in the present drawing appear again in the oil painting Couple in the Retiro Park, 1897-1898 (see illustration in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Early Years, 1881-1906, New York, 1991, p. 92). The drawing depicts more generalized landscape forms and has a more spontaneous air that is perhaps more successful than the carefully composed park setting in the oil painting. The overall effect in the drawing almost transcends regional influence and recalls a more international style, such as that practiced by the northerner Edvard Munch, whose work Picasso was unlikely to have encountered at this time. While the typically symbolist dimensions of anxiety and self-absorption are entirely absent here, the scene is no less interesting in the way it projects a youthful expression of the artist's romantic feelings, which contrasts all the more strongly with the deeper, more violent tensions that shaped the artist's life and the content of his art in the years to come.
A photo-certificate from Maya Widmaier Picasso dated paris October 21, 1997 accompanies this drawing.