12
Pablo Picasso
Buste modern style (Modern Style Bust)
- Estimate
- $40,000 - 60,000
$75,000
Lot Details
Lithograph, on Arches paper, the full sheet.
1949
S. 25 5/8 x 19 3/8 in. (65.1 x 49.2 cm)
Signed in black ink and numbered 44/50 in pencil in the upper left margin (there were also 5 artist's proofs), framed.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
Fernand Mourlot referred to this image and Buste au fond étoilé (M. 163) as "au point de vue métier une réussite remarquable (a high quality piece with remarkable success)". This was probably in reference to a new brush technique using lavis and gouache on lithograph paper then blotted onto the stone.
"We're all animals, more or less," he said, "and about three-quarters of the human race look like animals. But you don't. You're like a growing plant and I'd been wondering how I could get across the idea that you belong to the vegetable kingdom rather than the animal. I've never felt impelled to portray anyone else this way. It's strange, isn't it? I think it's just right, though. It represents you."
Picasso to Francoise Gilot in Life with Picasso, Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, 1964, p. 119
"We're all animals, more or less," he said, "and about three-quarters of the human race look like animals. But you don't. You're like a growing plant and I'd been wondering how I could get across the idea that you belong to the vegetable kingdom rather than the animal. I've never felt impelled to portray anyone else this way. It's strange, isn't it? I think it's just right, though. It represents you."
Picasso to Francoise Gilot in Life with Picasso, Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, 1964, p. 119
Literature
Pablo Picasso
Spanish | B. 1881 D. 1973One of the most dominant and influential artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso was a master of endless reinvention. While significantly contributing to the movements of Surrealism, Neoclassicism and Expressionism, he is best known for pioneering the groundbreaking movement of Cubism alongside fellow artist Georges Braque in the 1910s. In his practice, he drew on African and Iberian visual culture as well as the developments in the fast-changing world around him.Throughout his long and prolific career, the Spanish-born artist consistently pushed the boundaries of art to new extremes. Picasso's oeuvre is famously characterized by a radical diversity of styles, ranging from his early forays in Cubism to his Classical Period and his later more gestural expressionist work, and a diverse array of media including printmaking, drawing, ceramics and sculpture as well as theater sets and costumes designs.
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