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拍品专文
After various trips to Royan on the Atlantic coast in 1939 and 1940, Picasso decided to return to Paris. He moved to his studio in the rue des Grands Augustins and gave up his apartment in the rue La Boétie. His dealer Daniel Henry Kahnweiler was forced to emigrate in 1940. This subsequent phase was one of great turmoil and difficulty for the artist, who caught the anguish of these years in his first surrealist play Le désir attrapé par la queue.
In 1941, Picasso executed a number of portraits, both in oil and on paper. Alongside the many portraits of Dora Maar, his lover, are a few of Paul Eluard's wife, Nusch. They all share a sense of deep anguish, sadness and puzzlement at the world's destruction by war. Dominated by dark hues and almost violent shapes, they stand in direct contrast to a parallel output by the master, more in line with his classical phase of the early 1920s, to which the present work clearly belongs. The woman is portrayed in a refined style, her face showing no emotion, but a cool distance to the viewer. While the artist does not renounce his urge towards an expressionistic rendition of her strong jaw and striking features, he simplifies and stylises her face to an almost archetypal profile.
In 1941, Picasso executed a number of portraits, both in oil and on paper. Alongside the many portraits of Dora Maar, his lover, are a few of Paul Eluard's wife, Nusch. They all share a sense of deep anguish, sadness and puzzlement at the world's destruction by war. Dominated by dark hues and almost violent shapes, they stand in direct contrast to a parallel output by the master, more in line with his classical phase of the early 1920s, to which the present work clearly belongs. The woman is portrayed in a refined style, her face showing no emotion, but a cool distance to the viewer. While the artist does not renounce his urge towards an expressionistic rendition of her strong jaw and striking features, he simplifies and stylises her face to an almost archetypal profile.