Pablo Picasso - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Thursday, October 12, 2023 | Phillips

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  • ‘‘Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.’’
    —Pablo Picasso

    In the 50 years since his death, Pablo Picasso’s position as one of the most important figures of 20th-Century art has remained steadfast. Known for his use of colour and distortion of perspective and form, the present work is a wonderfully candid insight into the artist’s world. Executed in 1946, this work on paper, Femme nue debout III is a portrait of Picasso’s muse and lover Françoise Gilot – who passed away in June this year – completed in coloured crayon.

     

    Picasso has reduced the form of Gilot to an almost schematic outline. Simple, angular lines and constructions are used to illustrate her figure in its most basic form. Nevertheless, this unadorned depiction of Gilot marks Picasso’s continual interest in and engagement with art historical references. The nude figure, in contrapposto with her arms held above her head, is reminiscent of renaissance and neoclassical depictions of Venus – Roman goddess of love, sex and fertility. Venus Anadyomene (1848) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres bears a striking similarity to the work; the pose; her nudity; the blue horizon line of the sea; even the position of her breasts, with one facing the viewer and one in profile.

     

    Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Venus Anadyomene, 1808-1848, Musée Condé, Chantilly. Image: Photo Josse / Scala, Florence

     

    Picasso was frequently influenced by Ingres’ work; Woman with a Book (1932) was a reinterpretation of Ingres’ Madame Motessier (1844-56), and both works have recently been shown together for the first time in London’s National Gallery, highlighting the connection between the two artists. Whilst we can’t be certain, it is possible that Picasso was inspired by Ingres’ depiction of Venus, or similar interpretations like Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1485-86). This idea of feminine beauty and fertility elicited by Picasso’s study of Françoise Gilot as Venus is further emphasised by his reduction of form to simple shapes. A downwards-facing triangle has long since been recognised as a symbol of sex and fertility, echoing the shape of the ‘V’ of a woman’s groin. This triangular shape is repeated in the present work in the triangle created by Gilot’s arms, framing her face and directing the viewer’s eye to follow down the length of her body. We are presented with a dichotomy; to view this arrangement of basic lines and colour as a representation of sacred femininity.

     

    A signature exaggeration of body parts and use of asymmetry retains the work’s originality as a ‘Picasso’. In her memoirs Life with Picasso, when painting her, Gilot quotes Picasso as having said: ‘Of course the breasts are not symmetrical; nothing ever is. Every woman has two arms, two legs, two breasts, which may in real life be more or less symmetrical, but in painting they shouldn’t be shown to have any similarity’.i

     

    Whilst Picasso encourages the viewer to envisage Gilot as a goddess, his over exaggeration of her features is deliberately done to remind us that no one is perfect and symmetrical. In this way, the artist grounds his deity in a very human concept to represent the myriad of ways he viewed his muse. Inscribed to the lower left the work is the date ’28 juin 46’, which was only 3 months after the Picasso and Gilot moved in together, after having met in 1943. In the throws of the early years of their passionate decade-long relationship, it is unsurprising that Picasso chose to present her as goddess of love, beauty and sex. The two would go on to have two children together, and it is interesting to see the implications of Gilot as an embodiment of female fertility imbued within the work. 

     

     

    i Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 118

    • Provenance

      Thomas Gibson Fine Art Ltd., London​
      Collection of Scott Lynn, London​
      The Piccadilly Gallery, London​
      Private Collection, Europe​
      Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2012)
      Sotheby’s, London, 27 February 2019, lot 119​
      Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      London, Thomas Gibson Fine Art, Pablo Picasso works on paper 1915-1963, 1982, no. 10, n.p. (illustrated)

    • Artist Biography

      Pablo Picasso

      Spanish • 1881 - 1973

      One 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. 

      View More Works

PROPERTY OF A BELGIAN COLLECTOR

155

Femme nue debout III

dated '28 juin 46' lower left
coloured crayon on paper
50.3 x 32.8 cm (19 3/4 x 12 7/8 in.)
Executed on 28 June 1946.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠

Contact Specialist

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Associate Specialist
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Specialist, Associate Director
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20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 12 October 2023