Deux femmes

In Deux femmes, Pablo Picasso used oil and gouache to enhance the etched forms of two nude bathers seated on a grassy knoll. With sweeping strokes, Picasso infused the landscape with naturalistic color: a bright blue sky, a red cushion, and verdant green grass, but he also added unexpected touches of lavender and turquoise to the bodies of his blonde and brunette female subjects. Picasso’s application of paint to the pre-existing print was deliberately uneven, allowing certain lines of etching to peek through, such as the hatch marks that create the illusion of round volume in the thighs of the figure on the left, as well as the ornamental foliate pattern in the background, underneath the blue paint. This rare hybrid object thus combines two traditional modes of image making that were equally important within Picasso’s oeuvre: the print and the singular touch of his paintbrush.

Brigitte Baer, the art historian and cataloguer of Picasso’s graphic works, has identified the underlying print on this sheet as the second trial proof of the third and final state of an etching entitled Deux nu assis (Bloch 133; Baer 200), the original copperplate of which likely dates from September to October 1930. By the third state, the plate had already been cut down in size, the edges beveled, and a layer of steel added to reinforce the copper plate. Picasso produced approximately fifteen trial proofs on Rives wove paper made of cotton, before an edition of one hundred prints were published by Le Nouvel Essor.

Picasso elaborated upon two of those trial proofs with paint, creating two different paintings that are both featured in this sale: Deux femmes and Baigneuse au pouf rouge. In the latter example, Picasso substantially changed the composition, entirely eliminating one of the female figures. In Deux femmes, Picasso preserved the overall figurative arrangement depicted in the etching with a few important alterations. With paint, Picasso suppressed the facial details of the brunette on the left and changed the placement of her arms so that she hugs her bent knee, rather than touching her chin. The blonde now wraps one arm around the brunette in a more intimate embrace, and she extends her other arm down to touch the foot of the leg bent beneath her.

Baer has identified the subject of Deux femmes as Picasso’s own version of the Three Graces, goddesses from ancient Greco-Roman mythology. She also speculated about a biographical interpretation of the two female protagonists: “Picasso concentrated here on the relationship between two women and their intimacy as they bathe or wash themselves, far from prurient masculine eyes. [Picasso’s then-lover] Marie-Thérèse had a sister, Jeanne, who had an almost incestuous passion for her. It was platonic but Picasso sensed it and it bothered him. His resulting jealousy prevent him from ever liking her” (Picasso the Printmaker: Graphics from the Marina Picasso Collection, exh. cat., Dallas Museum of Art, 1983, p. 57).

Baer identified the blonde bather on the right as resembling Marie-Thérèse. She acknowledged, however, the Sapphic bather theme transcends this specific family drama and recurs in Picasso’s oeuvre from prior decades. This work also invokes artistic predecessors in the genre of the erotic female nude, from François Boucher to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Combining personal and archetypal themes, print and painted media, Deux femmes embodies the spirit of constant experimentation and reinvention that defines Picasso’s art.