Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, France, 1973).
"Profile", possibly made between 1945-1959.
Indian ink on paper.
Attached certificate issued by Mme. Maya Widmaier-Picasso.
Provenance: Maurice Rheims Collection; Henri Hell; Parisian private collection.
Signed in the upper left corner.
Measurements: 28 x 23 cm; 45 x 40 cm (frame).

Drawing made on the back of the page corresponding to the index of the book "Picasso Libre", edited by Louis Carré in 1945. According to the dedication "En souvenir de la "vie Ètrange des objets"/12.12 59" on the back of the montage, this drawing may have been given by Maurice Rheims in 1959 to Henri Hell, music critic and editor of the magazine "Fontaine", author of the biography of Francis Poulenc in 1978. Upon Henri Hell's death, this drawing passed into the hands of one of his friends who, upon his death, bequeathed the work to his granddaughter.
Given this provenance, Maya Widmaier-Picasso herself suggests the possibility that we are looking at a sketch of the profiled face of Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (Paris, 1899-1963). The relationship between Picasso and Poulenc can be understood thanks to the musical context that surrounded the Malaga-born artist throughout his life. The connection between the musicians and the Picasso's work - caused both by friendship with Picasso himself and by affinity in the themes - allows a journey through the artist's life: from his youth in Barcelona to his maturity, illustrated by the music that Francis Poulenc set to selected poems by Lorca.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso is the great genius of contemporary painting. Creator of cubism together with Braque, his capacity for invention and creation places him at the top of world painting. He was born in Malaga, where his father was a professor of drawing and director of the Municipal Museum. The Ruiz Picasso family soon moved to La Coruña, and from there to Barcelona, where the young Pablo began his artistic studies at the Provincial School of Fine Arts (1895). Although the school's style is totally academic, the painter soon comes into contact with modernist groups that change his form of expression. Only two years later, in 1897, Picasso had his first individual exhibition, in the café "Els Quatre Gats". Paris was to become Pablo's great goal and in 1900 he moved to the French capital for a brief period of time. When he returned to Barcelona, he began to work on a series of works in which the influences of all the artists he had known or whose work he had seen could be seen. He is a sponge that absorbs everything but retains nothing; he is searching for a personal style. Between 1901 and 1907 he developed the Blue and Pink Stages, characterized by the use of these colors and by their subject matter with sordid, isolated figures, with gestures of sorrow and suffering. The painting of these early years of the twentieth century was undergoing continuous changes and Picasso could not remain on the sidelines. He became interested in Cézanne, and based on his example he developed a new pictorial formula together with his friend Braque: Cubism. But Picasso did not stop there and in 1912 he practiced collage in painting; from that moment on, anything goes, imagination became the master of art. Picasso is the great revolutionary and when all painters are interested in cubism, he is concerned with the classicism of Ingres. The surrealist movement of 1925 did not catch him unawares and, although he did not participate openly, it served as an element of rupture with the previous, introducing in his work distorted figures with great force and not exempt of rage and fury. As with Goya, Picasso was also greatly influenced by his personal and social situation at the time of his work. His relationships with women, often tumultuous, will seriously affect his work. However, what had the greatest impact on Picasso was the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the bombing of Guernica, which led to the creation of the most famous work of contemporary art. Paris was his refuge for a long time, but the last years of his life were spent in the south of France, working in a very personal style, with vivid colors and strange shapes. Picasso is represented in the most important museums around the world, such as the Metropolitan, the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London or the Reina Sofia in Madrid.