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拍品专文
Blending together a classical subject and revolutionary style, Femme nue couchée is a high point of Picasso’s production on paper of the late 1930s. Executed in 1938, the work portrays a naked female figure, reclining on a narrow rug, whose pattern recalls those of North African manufacture. At that time, Picasso was alternating between his two lovers, Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar and the present work could be as Having met the artist during the fall of 1935, Maar would in a few years become his muse and companion, replacing Marie-Thérèse, who had given birth to the couple’s daughter Maya shortly before. A portrait of the one, as well as of the other, this hybrid figure exemplifies the complex relationship Picasso had with the female subject. As Marie Laure Bernadac phrases, ‘Picasso is the painter of woman: goddess of antiquity, mother, praying mantis, blown-up balloon, weeper, hysteric, body curled in a ball or sprawled in sleep… no painter has ever gone so far unveiling the feminine universe in all the complexity of its real and fantasy life” (‘Picasso, 1953-1972: Painting as Model’, Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery London, 1988, p. 80).
The daring dislocations and drastic deformations of the figure, born from the interest in Surrealism Picasso developed in the mid-1920s, stridently contrast with its traditional pose, alluding to a Venus pudica, which ties this work to those of Titian and Goya. Gone are the austere nudes of his Neoclassical period, as well as the voluptuously lyrical visions of 1932: in their place, an intricate network of angular lines and shapes charts the figure’s outline, almost an automatic drawing exposing the artist’s subconscious. Successor to a series of iconic works, created earlier in that decade, which instigated a new expression of romantic love and eroticism in modern art, this drawing contributes to cement Picasso’s position as both heir to the great Masters of the past and forerunner of today’s most radical artists.
The daring dislocations and drastic deformations of the figure, born from the interest in Surrealism Picasso developed in the mid-1920s, stridently contrast with its traditional pose, alluding to a Venus pudica, which ties this work to those of Titian and Goya. Gone are the austere nudes of his Neoclassical period, as well as the voluptuously lyrical visions of 1932: in their place, an intricate network of angular lines and shapes charts the figure’s outline, almost an automatic drawing exposing the artist’s subconscious. Successor to a series of iconic works, created earlier in that decade, which instigated a new expression of romantic love and eroticism in modern art, this drawing contributes to cement Picasso’s position as both heir to the great Masters of the past and forerunner of today’s most radical artists.