Alex Maguy, Paris

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1961 a 1962, vol. XX, no. 17, illustrated pl. 9
Douglas Cooper, Les Déjeneurs, London, 1963, no. 36
Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Sixties I, 1960-1963, San Francisco, 2002, no. 61-081, illustrated p. 140

Executed on cream wove paper. Work is laid down on paper and the backing sheet is attached to a window mat on the verso along the edges. A few pindot-size stains near the center of the top edge. Sheet is in good original condition and pencil line is strong. Some staining visible on the verso of backing sheet. Work is in good condition.
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Drawn in the summer of 1961, Les Déjeuners provides a brilliant convergence of several important themes which dominated Picasso's late oeuvre. These later works are marked by a magnificent and intense expressiveness that conveys the emotional undercurrents which drove Picasso as he confronted his waning virility. The work is the first of a series based on the same compositional structure with a seated nude and child in the foreground and a reclining nude in the background (see: Christian Zervos, op. cit., pls. 8-14). This series provided a significant stage in the development of the artist's masterful revisionings of Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, a theme which he returned to repeatedly between 1959 and 1962. The figure at left bears a strong resemblance to t🐈he figu꧂re in the background of many of his musings on Manet's masterpiece (fig. 1).

As with other works from these years, Picasso here strips down these art historical precedents from their dependence on color and carefully 💫mapped perspective. With boldly individual and modern gestures, Picasso is abꦬle to reify an atmosphere and emotional intensity with the simplest forms of color and line. The strength of his line allows him, and subsequently his viewer, to isolate the human element in these works and the figural story thus becomes the focal point.

Fig. 1 Pablo Picasso, Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe, 1961, oil on canvas, sold: Sotheby's, New ꧋York, May 7, 2008, lot 42