.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
By 1969, Pablo Picasso was widely regarded as the greatest living artist on earth. Though he was in his late eighties, Picasso remained prolific; he continued to pursue his life-long obsession with the human figure, exploring the formal possibilities of different figurative groupings and creating new combinations of color and media. The present work on paper, Trois personnages debout, offers a brilliantly-colored example of this recurring theme in his late work.
This composition represents a trio of figures, including one curvaceous female nude and two male figures. Of the three members of this ménage à trois, the woman's figure is the most fully drawn and colored. Her body parts are an accumulation of geometric and biomorphic shapes, yet each element—eyes, breasts, torso, buttocks, leg—is clearly legible. Picasso detailed certain aspects of her anatomy, including her nipple, belly button, even the folds of skin at her knees in pencil. Her flesh, hot pink and orange, is pigmented with oil sticks and colored wax crayons. The shadows and crevices of her body are comprised of violet and cerulean blue, and the empty space between the woman and her companions is charged with strokes of electric yellow and lime green.
The two men in this scene are less fully articulated than the woman. The central figure is drawn from the neck up, but the rest of his body is simply implied. His cascading curls and stylized facial hair recall the features of a musketeer. Picasso read Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel, Les trois mousquetaires, a few years earlier while on bed rest recovering from an operation; thereafter, the musketeer, an emblem of youthful, athletic, chivalrous masculinity, appeared regularly in his paintings and drawings. The man on the right in magenta-colored briefs is an even more ambiguous figure. He gestures towards his female companion with an over-sized magenta hand, but his face is obscured by a black shadow, rendering his identity and expression opaque.
Though the relationship between these three figures remains a mystery, their varying degrees of nudity and close proximity suggests a casual intimacy. This sheet may be read as an expression of Picasso's enduring creative and sensual energy, reinvigorated by his 1961 marriage to a much younger woman, Jacqueline Roque. Picasso later attempted to explain the ways in which his libido continued to inform his artistic practice, with his characteristic sense of humor: "'Whenever I see you, my first impulse is to...offer you a cigarette, even though I know that neither of us smokes any longer. Age has forced us to give it up, but the desire remains. It's the same with making love. We don't do it any more but the desire is still with us!" (quoted in J. Richardson, Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, 1953-1972, exh. cat., The Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 29).
This composition represents a trio of figures, including one curvaceous female nude and two male figures. Of the three members of this ménage à trois, the woman's figure is the most fully drawn and colored. Her body parts are an accumulation of geometric and biomorphic shapes, yet each element—eyes, breasts, torso, buttocks, leg—is clearly legible. Picasso detailed certain aspects of her anatomy, including her nipple, belly button, even the folds of skin at her knees in pencil. Her flesh, hot pink and orange, is pigmented with oil sticks and colored wax crayons. The shadows and crevices of her body are comprised of violet and cerulean blue, and the empty space between the woman and her companions is charged with strokes of electric yellow and lime green.
The two men in this scene are less fully articulated than the woman. The central figure is drawn from the neck up, but the rest of his body is simply implied. His cascading curls and stylized facial hair recall the features of a musketeer. Picasso read Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel, Les trois mousquetaires, a few years earlier while on bed rest recovering from an operation; thereafter, the musketeer, an emblem of youthful, athletic, chivalrous masculinity, appeared regularly in his paintings and drawings. The man on the right in magenta-colored briefs is an even more ambiguous figure. He gestures towards his female companion with an over-sized magenta hand, but his face is obscured by a black shadow, rendering his identity and expression opaque.
Though the relationship between these three figures remains a mystery, their varying degrees of nudity and close proximity suggests a casual intimacy. This sheet may be read as an expression of Picasso's enduring creative and sensual energy, reinvigorated by his 1961 marriage to a much younger woman, Jacqueline Roque. Picasso later attempted to explain the ways in which his libido continued to inform his artistic practice, with his characteristic sense of humor: "'Whenever I see you, my first impulse is to...offer you a cigarette, even though I know that neither of us smokes any longer. Age has forced us to give it up, but the desire remains. It's the same with making love. We don't do it any more but the desire is still with us!" (quoted in J. Richardson, Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, 1953-1972, exh. cat., The Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 29).