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Lot Essay
The male figures in Picasso's late paintings drawings and prints are often surrogates for the artist, who assumed the guise and attributes of men who were far younger than himself, or even older and more wisened. They might be figures out of old paintings or novels, like the mousquetaires, or dead artists brought back to life, such as Rembrandt and Degas. Prior to 1965, the young men and boys who appear in Picasso's paintings and drawings probably recall faces or types that Picasso and Jacqueline encountered in day trips away from their home in Mougins. After November 1965, however, following major surgery, Picasso grew increasingly reclusive, relying ever more on memory and imagination to supply the diverse characters that populate his pictures.
One of the few men whom Picasso saw regularly in his final years, apart from those in a diminishing circle of old friends, was his chauffeur Maurice Bresnu, who joined the Picasso household with his wife (who, like Picasso's spouse, was named Jacqueline) in early 1965. Bresnu served Picasso to the end of the artist's life and assisted his widow Jacqueline thereafter. Nicknamed 'Nounours' ('Teddy-Bear'), Bresnu was an imposing fellow, bearded and burly, just like the man seen in the present drawing. John Richardson has written, 'Henceforth Bresnu-like men with curly beards and blobs of dark hair would appear ever more frequently in the artist's imagery... The fact that the love-makers in one sequence look remarkably like Bresnu and Jacqueline does not imply an affair between his wife and his driver. Picasso seems to have assumed the identity of the younger, more potent Bresnu much as he assumed the identity and appropriated the powers of Rembrandt' (in 'The Bresnu Collection', catalogue introduction, sale Christie's, New York, 19 November 1998, p. 6). Bresnu's presence projected the artist's own once-vaunted machismo, and he became one more surrogate for the artist, assuming an important place in his late paintings and drawings.
One of Picasso's favorite means of creating a portrait was to devise a single visage from two or more views of a head. He had employed this method, derived from the cubist practice of depicting an object as a composite image of multiple views, since the mid-1920s. In the present drawing he has superimposed the profile of a clean-shaven man on the frontal view of a bearded, Bresnu-like face. Dual aspect portraits and double figure compositions had preoccupied Picasso for the previous two days in November 1969 (cf. Zervos, vol. 31, nos. 494-497 and 499). The conjoined visages might infer the complex layering of character or even opposing emotional tendencies within a single personality, or suggest an introspective state of mind. The profile in the present drawing appears to represent a man who is younger than the bearded figure behind him. This portrait may allude to the evolution of male physiognomy from young manhood, which the artist depicted here in sharply etched, striated planes, into the more rounded forms of middle age and beyond. Both aspects also reflect the essential stylistic duality in Picasso's work, going as far back as the mid-1910s, in which the artist alternately created pictures that were at one moment angular and cubist, and then more naturalistic and classical.
One of the few men whom Picasso saw regularly in his final years, apart from those in a diminishing circle of old friends, was his chauffeur Maurice Bresnu, who joined the Picasso household with his wife (who, like Picasso's spouse, was named Jacqueline) in early 1965. Bresnu served Picasso to the end of the artist's life and assisted his widow Jacqueline thereafter. Nicknamed 'Nounours' ('Teddy-Bear'), Bresnu was an imposing fellow, bearded and burly, just like the man seen in the present drawing. John Richardson has written, 'Henceforth Bresnu-like men with curly beards and blobs of dark hair would appear ever more frequently in the artist's imagery... The fact that the love-makers in one sequence look remarkably like Bresnu and Jacqueline does not imply an affair between his wife and his driver. Picasso seems to have assumed the identity of the younger, more potent Bresnu much as he assumed the identity and appropriated the powers of Rembrandt' (in 'The Bresnu Collection', catalogue introduction, sale Christie's, New York, 19 November 1998, p. 6). Bresnu's presence projected the artist's own once-vaunted machismo, and he became one more surrogate for the artist, assuming an important place in his late paintings and drawings.
One of Picasso's favorite means of creating a portrait was to devise a single visage from two or more views of a head. He had employed this method, derived from the cubist practice of depicting an object as a composite image of multiple views, since the mid-1920s. In the present drawing he has superimposed the profile of a clean-shaven man on the frontal view of a bearded, Bresnu-like face. Dual aspect portraits and double figure compositions had preoccupied Picasso for the previous two days in November 1969 (cf. Zervos, vol. 31, nos. 494-497 and 499). The conjoined visages might infer the complex layering of character or even opposing emotional tendencies within a single personality, or suggest an introspective state of mind. The profile in the present drawing appears to represent a man who is younger than the bearded figure behind him. This portrait may allude to the evolution of male physiognomy from young manhood, which the artist depicted here in sharply etched, striated planes, into the more rounded forms of middle age and beyond. Both aspects also reflect the essential stylistic duality in Picasso's work, going as far back as the mid-1910s, in which the artist alternately created pictures that were at one moment angular and cubist, and then more naturalistic and classical.