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Impressionist and Modern Art
|
- Sale 6379
Live
| New York
Oct 28 | 11:00 AM EDT
Live
| New York
Sale 6379
| New York
| New York
Estimate$80,000 – $120,000
Unframed.
Provenance:
Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris, France.
Collection of Herman C. Goldsmith, New York, February 17, 1971.
Acquired directly from the above.
Collection of Mr. Harold M. Rapp.
The Estate of Harold M. Rapp.
By descent in the Rapp family to the present owner.
Literature:
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Éditions Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1932-1978, Vol. 31, no. 109 & 110, p. 36 (both illustrated).
Note:
In early 1969, late in his life and career, Pablo Picasso embarked on a series of paintings he called Portraits Imaginaires, or Imaginary Portraits, bursts of color and playfulness that referred to favorite subjects found in paintings by Rembrandt, or in literary classics by William Shakespeare, Honoré de Balzac, or Alexandre Dumas. Painted quickly on discarded pieces of corrugated cardboard that accompanied an art supply shipment, the works were theatrical, whimsical and bright, and later adapted into a suite of twenty-nine lithographs by the printmaker Marcel Salinas. Created between 1969 and 1972, the suite was published posthumously in 1973 by Salinas.
The present double-sided drawing, Tête d’Homme (with Deux Têtes verso), dates from this period. Executed in March 1969, it recalls Rembrandt’s seventeenth-century Dutch dandies while evoking Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers, all attired in Louis XIII garments. With their swirling hair, beards, and playful gazes, these figures offer a stylized, fantastical guise for Picasso’s late-career reimaginings of a familiar and nostalgic theme. For the artist, the Musketeers embodied masculinity, vitality, power, and strength—and have even been described by art historians as his “alter ego,” a notion made all the more poignant by the fact that Picasso's health appeared to slightly decline at the time this drawing was created, the artist recovering from an invasive stomach surgery a few years prior.
To request further details about this lot, please email [email protected]
The work is unframed and in overall good condition. The paper is slightly toned with mat staining verso. There are some tiny soft handling creases at the extreme corners. On recto there are a few pinpoint spots of soiling, for instance at top left, bottom left and right center. On verso there is a line of yellowish staining, horizontally at top right approx. 1/2 in. from the top edge, running about 1 1/2 in. long. There is a stray pencil mark in the left figure's hat, approx. 1 1/2 in. There are a few pinpoint fox marks, for instance in the right figure's eyebrow and in the left figure's beard. Additional images available upon request.
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Please email [email protected] for any additional information or questions you may have regarding this lot.
