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Lot Essay
Executed in 1901, Etude pour 'Le mort' is filled with drama. The huddled figures of mourners are grouped around a body in a scene reminiscent of an Old Master deposition, but Picasso's use of thick outlines gives this work a raw, expressionistic and modern quality. While the ground in Etude pour 'Le mort' is rendered in a terracotta-like colour, everything else apart from the body - left a jarring, luminous white - is tinted with a ghostly blue, demonstrating this work's place at the very dawn of Picasso's celebrated Blue Period. Rather than disrupting the classical appearance of the subject matter, this all shows Picasso's own personal and emotional involvement in the depiction of the scene. For this is not a deposition, but represents instead the death of Picasso's friend Carles Casagemas.
During his second journey to Paris in 1901, Picasso's life and work were in many ways overshadowed by the recent suicide of his friend. For well over a year, the two had been inseparable companions, until a journey they both took to Malaga when Picasso managed to bundle his friend off back to Paris. Casagemas had been increasingly anxious about his affair with Germaine in Paris, which he believed would lead to marriage. Germaine, who was married, had had affairs with many of the artists there, and to her the affair with Casagemas was distinguished only by its lack of sexual consummation. The disappointment to Casagemas was great, and was only increased on his return to Paris, where Germaine announced that she intended to return to her husband. This led to Casagemas' public attempt to shoot her, and then himself. Germaine was unwounded, but Casagemas was fatally injured and died that evening. Although Casagemas himself would not feature in Picasso's art for some months after his death, it was this tragic event that brought about the beginning of the Blue Period. When this style was already coming to dominate his pictures, he suddenly turned to a group of pictures of Casagemas, and of death, most famously in Le mort, for which this is a study, and L'enterrement de Casagemas.
The importance of Etude pour 'Le mort' is demonstrated by its former inclusion in the fabled collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., who was not only a car magnate, but one of the great American collectors of modern art in the first half of the Twentieth Century. While the formidable Chrysler Museum of Art was almost entirely founded with his collection as its base, Chrysler also helped to steer the Museum of Modern Art's collecting in its early days.
During his second journey to Paris in 1901, Picasso's life and work were in many ways overshadowed by the recent suicide of his friend. For well over a year, the two had been inseparable companions, until a journey they both took to Malaga when Picasso managed to bundle his friend off back to Paris. Casagemas had been increasingly anxious about his affair with Germaine in Paris, which he believed would lead to marriage. Germaine, who was married, had had affairs with many of the artists there, and to her the affair with Casagemas was distinguished only by its lack of sexual consummation. The disappointment to Casagemas was great, and was only increased on his return to Paris, where Germaine announced that she intended to return to her husband. This led to Casagemas' public attempt to shoot her, and then himself. Germaine was unwounded, but Casagemas was fatally injured and died that evening. Although Casagemas himself would not feature in Picasso's art for some months after his death, it was this tragic event that brought about the beginning of the Blue Period. When this style was already coming to dominate his pictures, he suddenly turned to a group of pictures of Casagemas, and of death, most famously in Le mort, for which this is a study, and L'enterrement de Casagemas.
The importance of Etude pour 'Le mort' is demonstrated by its former inclusion in the fabled collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., who was not only a car magnate, but one of the great American collectors of modern art in the first half of the Twentieth Century. While the formidable Chrysler Museum of Art was almost entirely founded with his collection as its base, Chrysler also helped to steer the Museum of Modern Art's collecting in its early days.