- 456
Pablo Picasso
Description
- Pablo Picasso
- LES DÉJEUNERS
- Signed and dated Picasso 27.6.61 IV (lower right)
- Colored crayons on paper
- 10 5/8 by 16 1/2 in.
- 27 by 42 cm
Provenance
Herman C. Goldsmith, New York (1968)
Estate of Elisabeth Hirsch (sold: Christie's, New York, May 13, 1999, lot 335)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Exhibited
Amsterdam, Galerie D'eendt n.v., Pablo Picasso: Les Déjeuners, 1965, no. 6
Literature
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1961 à 1962, vol. 20, Paris, 1968, no. 105, illustrated p. 54
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. The Sixties I, 1960-1963, San Francisco, 2002, no. 61-170, illustrated p. 163
Catalogue Note
From 1959-1962, Picasso created over one hundred seventy-five paintings and drawings inspired by Manet's masterpiece Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863 (fig. 1). According to Susan Galassi, "...for Picasso, as for Manet, the Déjeuner offered the opportunity to reassess the central theme of the nude and invest it with new life. Over the course of his transformations, he strips away Manet's overlay of realism, and takes the female figure back to something more timeless, enduring and primordial'' (Picasso's Variations on the Masters, New York, 1996, p. 200). Unlike many of his contemporaries who focused solely on abstraction, the present work illustrates Picasso's ceaseless interest in the human figure and the déjeuner theme.
Fig. 1 Edouard Manet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863, Musée d'Orsay, Paris