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拍品专文
Mère et enfant is one of a series of works which Pablo Picasso began on 25 October 1965, on the occasion of his 84th birthday. Painted two days later, this large-scale canvas is a bold celebration of motherhood, which, together with the rest of the series, demonstrates the central place that this theme had occupied the artist throughout his life. From his Blue Period visions of mothers and children, to his deeply personal portrayals of his wife Olga and their son, Paul, and later, his playful, color-filled portraits of Claude and Paloma, Picasso had continually explored the potentials of this timeless and universal subject. As Werner Spies has surmised, “he addressed this grand and inexhaustible theme in a manner of a child playing hide and seek” (Picasso’s World of Children, Munich, 1994, p. 112).
At this time in his life, Picasso was avidly examining the work of a variety of artists from the past. Masterpieces by Diego Velázquez, Rembrandt van Rijn, Nicolas Poussin, Eugène Delacroix, and Edouard Manet had been consumed by the artist’s gaze before being reimagined in his own hand. “In old age Picasso would admit to being very conscious of old masters breathing down his neck,” John Richardson explained. “Far from being bothered by this, he was so secure in his genius that he conjured master after master into the heart of his work and had his way with them” (A Life of Picasso, 1881-1906, London, 1991, vol. I, p. 185).
Like the musketeer, which was a visual conglomeration of artistic sources used to fashion a bold alter-ego of the artist himself, the mother and child motif similarly allowed Picasso to marry the artistic past with his own personal present. Happily married to Jacqueline Roque, his last great love, Picasso looked back across past decades, meditating on his own life and the family he had created, including his four children. It is not surprising that images of fatherhood, motherhood, and children should fill his art of this time, together forming a bold homage to his life and art. “Ultimately,” Picasso once said, “love is all there is” (quoted in Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints 1953-1972, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 80).
As with every stage of his career, Picasso used well-known motifs to experiment and explore a new painterly idiom. In the present work, the artist’s distinctive bold and gestural handling and simplified mode of expression encapsulates his style of the time. “A dot for the breast, a line for the painter, five spots of color for the foot, a few strokes of pink and green… That’s enough, isn’t it?” he declared. “What else do I need to do? What can I add to that? It has all been said” (quoted in B. Léal et al., The Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2003, p. 464). Working with an unprecedented vigor and directness, Picasso distilled imagery into a combination of strokes and forms, creating a shorthand of signs and symbols which vividly conjured the subject he was conveying. In the present work, Picasso has, with a deft economy of means, combined the centuries-old iconography of the Madonna, adorned in a luminous blue dress, with his own idiosyncratic pictorial language. The hands of the mother and child are rendered in the same way, the simplified circles denoting their fingers further heightening the intense intimacy of their relationship. The pair also appears encircled by white, united as a single, unbreakable entity.
Mère et enfant was acquired by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler at the Galerie Louise Leiris, one of Picasso’s key dealers of this time, before being sold to the Brook Street Gallery, London, where it was exhibited in a retrospective of the artist held in 1971. Acquired by the present owner in 2006, the painting has remained in the same collection for almost twenty years.
At this time in his life, Picasso was avidly examining the work of a variety of artists from the past. Masterpieces by Diego Velázquez, Rembrandt van Rijn, Nicolas Poussin, Eugène Delacroix, and Edouard Manet had been consumed by the artist’s gaze before being reimagined in his own hand. “In old age Picasso would admit to being very conscious of old masters breathing down his neck,” John Richardson explained. “Far from being bothered by this, he was so secure in his genius that he conjured master after master into the heart of his work and had his way with them” (A Life of Picasso, 1881-1906, London, 1991, vol. I, p. 185).
Like the musketeer, which was a visual conglomeration of artistic sources used to fashion a bold alter-ego of the artist himself, the mother and child motif similarly allowed Picasso to marry the artistic past with his own personal present. Happily married to Jacqueline Roque, his last great love, Picasso looked back across past decades, meditating on his own life and the family he had created, including his four children. It is not surprising that images of fatherhood, motherhood, and children should fill his art of this time, together forming a bold homage to his life and art. “Ultimately,” Picasso once said, “love is all there is” (quoted in Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints 1953-1972, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 80).
As with every stage of his career, Picasso used well-known motifs to experiment and explore a new painterly idiom. In the present work, the artist’s distinctive bold and gestural handling and simplified mode of expression encapsulates his style of the time. “A dot for the breast, a line for the painter, five spots of color for the foot, a few strokes of pink and green… That’s enough, isn’t it?” he declared. “What else do I need to do? What can I add to that? It has all been said” (quoted in B. Léal et al., The Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2003, p. 464). Working with an unprecedented vigor and directness, Picasso distilled imagery into a combination of strokes and forms, creating a shorthand of signs and symbols which vividly conjured the subject he was conveying. In the present work, Picasso has, with a deft economy of means, combined the centuries-old iconography of the Madonna, adorned in a luminous blue dress, with his own idiosyncratic pictorial language. The hands of the mother and child are rendered in the same way, the simplified circles denoting their fingers further heightening the intense intimacy of their relationship. The pair also appears encircled by white, united as a single, unbreakable entity.
Mère et enfant was acquired by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler at the Galerie Louise Leiris, one of Picasso’s key dealers of this time, before being sold to the Brook Street Gallery, London, where it was exhibited in a retrospective of the artist held in 1971. Acquired by the present owner in 2006, the painting has remained in the same collection for almost twenty years.