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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Claude Ruiz-Picasso dated Le 10 juillet 1981.
Maya Widmaier-Picasso and Claude Ruiz-Picasso have confirmed the authenticity of this work.
In the catalogue for the ground-breaking exhibition Les Demoiselles d'Avignon at the Musée Picasso, Paris, in 1988, Brigitte Léal laid out the contents of sixteen sketchbooks that contained studies for Picasso's famous painting. The artist began making sketches in late 1906, and drew constantly for months, as he prepared to undertake Les Demoiselles. He began to paint this large canvas in May 1907, and continued to make sketches and studies as he worked on it into the summer. Some of the drawings from the carnets had already been illustrated in the Zervos and Daix/Rosselet catalogues, but many were unfamiliar, and together they contributed to a deeper understanding of the complex and extended process by which Picasso forged the radically expressive character of this pioneering masterwork.
The present drawing comes from the Carnet 5, which is actually a catalogue for an exhibition of Daumier watercolours, drawings and lithographs held at Galerie Léonce & Paul Rosenberg, Paris, 15 April - 6 May 1907. Picasso, who had been filling any sketchbook or scraps of paper that came to hand, drew on the blank pages of this catalogue, in which the quality of the paper was superior to that which he was accustomed to using. He executed this drawing on the left-hand page facing the page heading "Première Partie/Dessins & Aquarelles", which bears a faint counter-impression of the black chalk lines. It seems likely that Picasso drew in this catalogue soon after he acquired it, permitting the dating of its contents from mid-April to some time in May, the only group of Demoiselles sketches that can be dated with any accuracy by means of external, non-visual references.
This drawing of an ovoid face with a peaked forehead is directly related to the painting Femmes aux main jointes, which Picasso painted in spring 1907 (Zervos, vol. 2**, no. 662). This face bears Picasso's typical "Iberian" stylisation, derived from his discovery of early Spanish sculpture during his stay in Gosol during the summer of 1906, and his subsequent study of Iberian heads in the Louvre, where they were exhibited in the so-called "Phoenician" room. In fact, Picasso had some of these heads in his possession, having bought them from Géry Pieret, a picaresque character who once served as Guillaume Apollinaire's secretary. Pieret had stolen them from the Louvre in early March, probably with Picasso in mind. Picasso returned them in 1911. John Richardson has written, "Their clunky primitivism - bulging eyes, mammoth ears, heavy jaws - provided [Picasso] with an ethnic catalyst for stylistic experimentation. More to the point, these "barbarous" objects were Spain's only contribution to the art of the ancient world. As such, they constituted Picasso's Spanish roots. Their atavistic power was a major, though by no means unique, source of energy with which the artist, like Frankenstein, would galvanize his Demoiselles into life" (in A Life of Picasso, volume II: 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 23).
The simplified Iberian features seen in this study nearly constitute a paradigm for numerous manifestations of this type seen in the carnets and related paintings during the period in which Picasso was working on Les Demoiselles in its initial, purely Iberian stages. The two frontally-posed central figures in Les Demoiselles retained the Iberian features seen in this drawing. This stylisation is also observable in Femme au corsage jaune (Z., vol. 2*, no. 43), which was begun in early spring, and according to Richardson, finished during the summer (op. cit., p. 40). This image even provided a starting point for the "Africanised" heads that Picasso began to draw later that spring, following his revelation of the tribal masks in the Ethnographical Museum at the Trocadéro in Paris. Study 4 in Carnet 10 (Z., vol. 26, no. 99), the sketchbook which Leo and Gertrude Stein purchased from the artist in 1907, was based on the general contours seen in the present drawing, over which Picasso overlaid the striated planes that he derived from African masks. Consequently, Picasso repainted - "Africanised" - the two right-hand Demoiselles in July, before finally ceasing work on the painting.
Maya Widmaier-Picasso and Claude Ruiz-Picasso have confirmed the authenticity of this work.
In the catalogue for the ground-breaking exhibition Les Demoiselles d'Avignon at the Musée Picasso, Paris, in 1988, Brigitte Léal laid out the contents of sixteen sketchbooks that contained studies for Picasso's famous painting. The artist began making sketches in late 1906, and drew constantly for months, as he prepared to undertake Les Demoiselles. He began to paint this large canvas in May 1907, and continued to make sketches and studies as he worked on it into the summer. Some of the drawings from the carnets had already been illustrated in the Zervos and Daix/Rosselet catalogues, but many were unfamiliar, and together they contributed to a deeper understanding of the complex and extended process by which Picasso forged the radically expressive character of this pioneering masterwork.
The present drawing comes from the Carnet 5, which is actually a catalogue for an exhibition of Daumier watercolours, drawings and lithographs held at Galerie Léonce & Paul Rosenberg, Paris, 15 April - 6 May 1907. Picasso, who had been filling any sketchbook or scraps of paper that came to hand, drew on the blank pages of this catalogue, in which the quality of the paper was superior to that which he was accustomed to using. He executed this drawing on the left-hand page facing the page heading "Première Partie/Dessins & Aquarelles", which bears a faint counter-impression of the black chalk lines. It seems likely that Picasso drew in this catalogue soon after he acquired it, permitting the dating of its contents from mid-April to some time in May, the only group of Demoiselles sketches that can be dated with any accuracy by means of external, non-visual references.
This drawing of an ovoid face with a peaked forehead is directly related to the painting Femmes aux main jointes, which Picasso painted in spring 1907 (Zervos, vol. 2**, no. 662). This face bears Picasso's typical "Iberian" stylisation, derived from his discovery of early Spanish sculpture during his stay in Gosol during the summer of 1906, and his subsequent study of Iberian heads in the Louvre, where they were exhibited in the so-called "Phoenician" room. In fact, Picasso had some of these heads in his possession, having bought them from Géry Pieret, a picaresque character who once served as Guillaume Apollinaire's secretary. Pieret had stolen them from the Louvre in early March, probably with Picasso in mind. Picasso returned them in 1911. John Richardson has written, "Their clunky primitivism - bulging eyes, mammoth ears, heavy jaws - provided [Picasso] with an ethnic catalyst for stylistic experimentation. More to the point, these "barbarous" objects were Spain's only contribution to the art of the ancient world. As such, they constituted Picasso's Spanish roots. Their atavistic power was a major, though by no means unique, source of energy with which the artist, like Frankenstein, would galvanize his Demoiselles into life" (in A Life of Picasso, volume II: 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 23).
The simplified Iberian features seen in this study nearly constitute a paradigm for numerous manifestations of this type seen in the carnets and related paintings during the period in which Picasso was working on Les Demoiselles in its initial, purely Iberian stages. The two frontally-posed central figures in Les Demoiselles retained the Iberian features seen in this drawing. This stylisation is also observable in Femme au corsage jaune (Z., vol. 2*, no. 43), which was begun in early spring, and according to Richardson, finished during the summer (op. cit., p. 40). This image even provided a starting point for the "Africanised" heads that Picasso began to draw later that spring, following his revelation of the tribal masks in the Ethnographical Museum at the Trocadéro in Paris. Study 4 in Carnet 10 (Z., vol. 26, no. 99), the sketchbook which Leo and Gertrude Stein purchased from the artist in 1907, was based on the general contours seen in the present drawing, over which Picasso overlaid the striated planes that he derived from African masks. Consequently, Picasso repainted - "Africanised" - the two right-hand Demoiselles in July, before finally ceasing work on the painting.