Pablo Picasso
framed 33 x 27.5 cm
titled lower centre La Sirène
From Met Museum of Art about a drawing made on the back of a business card, see additionalimages: This is one of dozens of drawings that Picasso made on the backs of business cards for the cotton factory owned by the family of his friends Juan and Sebastián Juñer-Vidal. It shows him developing an inscrutable, hieratic pose that he would use several times in paintings made over the next three years.
Provenance
Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this workGuillaume Apollinaire, Paris (acquired before 1918)
Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 27th May, 1972
Galleria della Trinità, Rome
Acquired from the above by the present owner
‘La Sirène’ from 1907 is a virtuoso example of the unilinear graphic style Picasso had recently developed. His pen moves fluidly in a single, uninterrupted line, without lifting from the surface of the paper, as if drawing in space, to achieve pure and lyrical figurative clarity. Made on the verso of a Montmartre business card, the drawing was a gift to Picasso’s close friend Guillaume Apollinaire, who had asked him to illustrate his first published collection of poems, 'Le Bestiaire ou
Cortège d'Orphée'. Picasso made numerous small unilinear drawings for the bestiary, but Apollinaire pushed him to try instead the ancient, but time-consuming, art of woodcut illustration. Picasso obliged with unilinear woodcuts of a chick and an eagle, but by then he had started work on ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’, a project that soon became all-consuming. As a result, their Bestiaire partnership petered out and Apollinaire settled for woodcuts by Raoul Dufy.Join our mailing list
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