Spanish, 1881-1973
Picasso’s private conflicts were both projected and exorcised in his work and this is most evident in his portraits, particularly those of the women in his life. Amongst the artist’s most impressive achievements are the series of great classical portraits executed just prior to and during World War II in which the head of Dora Maar is submitted to a succession of fantastic distortions. The most famous of these was Dora as ‘The Weeping Woman’. Following on from the anguished souls he depicted in ‘Guernica,’ the Weeping Woman openly shows raw emotion, both personal and universal. In these ‘portraits’ of Maar, no matter how freakishly the face is twisted, her firm mouth, strong chin, candid eyes and dark hair, remain identifiable.
These pained portrayals of Maar served as Picasso’s symbol for the abhorrence of war, the suffering of the domination of France under German occupation and the agonies endured by his countrymen in his beloved homeland, Spain, which by then had been torn apart by civil war. Equally, they also reflect the fact that the cruel aggressor was now part of what Picasso had become in his private life.
The present work was created in the summer of 1944, when the great passion of Picasso and Maar’s relationship had run its course and she was now being eclipsed by Françoise Gilot. These were also the dark final months of the occupation of Paris, friends were being arrested and taken away to their deaths and although Picasso enjoyed a certain protection due to his fame, there had been much sadness and pain around him. His feeling that life was condemned is reflected in a play which he wrote entitled ‘Desire Caught by the Tail’, a melancholy, bitter and cynical tale of disaster and meaningless love. Around the time that the present work was painted, Michel and Louise Leiris held a reading of the play, directed by Albert Camus, parts being played by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Satre, Dora Maar and Sabartes amongst others. Picasso invited the players back to his studio after the reading. The photograph taken that evening by Brassaï, (fig. 1), clearly shows on a shelf to the right, the series of portraits to which the present work belongs.
Buste de Jeune Femme is a powerful and direct portrayal of emotion. The ‘Weeping Woman’ has developed a silent pained composure. Although still displaying the slight distortion of the face, there are no painterly devices. Each part of this young woman’s face has been placed on the page with clarity and she is not defined by armchair, patterns, blouses, or any other distractions. We see a face which has known pain and is staring at us quietly. Experience has forced her to be strong. By the expression in her eyes she is alarmed but has learned to be watchful, lest the wrong word or action leads to her doom. Her tight mouth, indicated by a mere stroke of the brush, shows that she is resigned to silence. She speaks through her eyes, those large staring eyes which so echo the later portraits of Dora Maar.
Picasso established his reputation as a master draughtsman at a very early age and this painting displays beautifully, how, with the minimal of marks, he could capture the feelings of a world waiting to be released from pain. Paris was liberated on 25 August that year. Buste de Jeune Femme, painted in the darkest hours before this dawn, is a powerful symbol of those days.
Zervos XIII, 269
Maya Picasso certificate
French, 1869-1954
Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Provenance:
Galerie Benezit, Paris
Galerie Ile de France, Paris
Private Collection, Paris
Henri Matisse was a French painter, draughtsman, sculptor, printmaker, designer and writer. He came to art comparatively late in life and made his reputation as the principal protagonist of Fauvism, the first avant-garde movement at the turn of the century. He went on to develop a monumental decorative art, which was innovative both in its treatment of the human figure and in the constructive and expressive role accorded to color. His long career culminated in a highly original series of works made of paper cut-outs, which confirmed his reputation, with Picasso, as one of the major artists of the 20th century. At the end of 1917 Matisse moved to Nice and he would live here for at least part, and usually most, of each year for the remainder of his life. However, it is the span of years through the 1920’s that is usually known as his “Nice period”, and to which the present work belongs. Between 1905 and 1913 Matisse had established himself as one of the most important figures of the avant-garde but, never complacent, his work now turned in a new direction.
Deux Odalisques is part of the series of works that Matisse executed in 1927-28 whilst living at 1 place Charles-Félix. These works depict light-filled and richly decorated interiors inhabited by sensual, exotically dressed models evocative of the odalisques from an oriental harem. Matisse’s taste for the orient was cultivated on visits that he made to North Africa, particularly to Tangier in 1912 and 1913. He was also drawing on the legacy of the French orientalist masters, Delacroix and Ingres, calling to mind Algerian Women in their Apartment (The Louvre, Paris) and The Turkish Bath (The Louvre, Paris) respectively. Deux Odalisques relates, in particular, to Matisse’s oil paintings of 1928, Deux odalisques dont l’une dévêtue, fond ornemental et damier (Moderna Museet, Stockholm) and Les repos des modèles (Philadelphia Museum of Art). Aside from the reclining figures, the common motifs in these works include the chequer board, the distinctive ornamental wallpaper, and the still life with lemons, tray, glass and vase. However, Matisse’s drawings were rarely actual studies for paintings. Although one may see repeated poses or motifs, they were almost invariably executed as completed works in their own right.
Matisse considered that his works in pure line were the most important of his drawings and in the late 1920’s they had reached full maturity. Characterised by a surety of handling, the artist draws quickly and fluently, setting down outlines with soft light curves and expressing internal details with bunched repeated arabesques. These works are charged with the implication of light and colour. In the present work the two models recline asleep and intertwined. They seem unwakeable and unreachable, enclosed in their own world. There is a luxury, calm and voluptuousness about the whole scene. Matisse captures the mood of these works beautifully when he says: “Look closely at these odalisques. They bask in the blazing glory of a bright sunlight which appropriates colours and forms. The oriental décor of the interiors, the array of hangings and rugs, the rich costumes, the sleepy sensuality of the heavy flesh, the blissful torpor in the eyes of the models awaiting their pleasures; all the splendour of the siesta taken to a maximum intensity of ornament and colour….(Xavier Girard, Matisse in Nice 1917-1954, London, 1996, translated from Verdet, 1952, p.125)
Among all the subjects in Matisse's oeuvre, the odalisque is his best known and most beloved. The allure of this exotic figure, often depicted in various states of nudity, was of insatiable appeal to the artist. Throughout his career, Matisse devoted several compositions to images of this paradigm of female sensuality, depicting her seated in a richly upholstered armchair or reclining on a bed. In this drawing from 1928, he has rendered not one but three of these temptresses, lounging in what appears to be an ornately decorated harem. The setting for this drawing was most likely one of his hotel rooms in Nice, where the artist lived periodically throughout the 1920s. Fascinated with both the textile patterns of the furniture and the wallpaper, as well as the curves and contours of the female body, Matisse is able to exercise several of his aesthetic predilections in this exquisite drawing.
Matisse often spoke of how the act of drawing was integral to his approach to oil painting, but it is important to realize that his compositions in pen and ink are complete works in their own right. Ernst Gerhard Güse has written, "There is nothing provisional about his drawings: they are complete, finished works, resulting from an extended process of identification. The line which encircles the objects supplied a final, conclusive definition. Through the connection between the line and the artist's emotions, his inner life, the drawing becomes an act of assimilation, taking possession of nature" (Ernst Gerhard Güse, Matisse, Drawings and Sculpture, Munich,
1991, p. 10).
French, 1869-1954
Provenance
Sotheby's sale, London, April 30, 1969 (Lot 391) Noah Goldowsky, New York Mr. Joseph P. Shure, Chicago Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago Private collection, New York (acquired from the above December 1988)
Photo-certificate of authenticity signed and dated by Madame Duthuit on May 12, 1969 in Paris.
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of color and his fluid, brilliant and original draftsmanship. As a draftsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but principally as a painter, Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the 20th century. Although he was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s, he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of color and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
Around 1904 he met Pablo Picasso, who was 12 years younger than him.[4] The two became life-long friends as well as rivals and are often compared; one key difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted most frequently by both artists were women and still lifes.
The first painting of Matisse acquired by a public collection was Still Life with Geraniums (1910), exhibited in the Pinakothek der Moderne.[14] Today, a Matisse painting can fetch as much as US $17 million. In 2002, a Matisse sculpture, Reclining Nude I (Dawn), sold for US $9.2 million, a record for a sculpture by the artist.
The Plum Blossoms a 1948 painting by Henri Matisse, was purchased on September 8, 2005, for the Museum of Modern Art by Henry Kravis and the new president of the museum, Marie-Josée Drouin. Estimated price was US $25 million. Previously, it had not been seen by the public since 1970.
Matisse’s daughter Marguerite often aided Matisse scholars with insights about his working methods and his works. She died in 1982 while compiling a catalog of her father's work.
Matisse’s son, Pierre Matisse, (1900-1989) opened an important modern art gallery in New York City during the 1930s. The Pierre Matisse Gallery which was active from 1931 until 1989 represented and exhibited many European artists and a few Americans and Canadians in New York often for the first time. He exhibited Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, André Derain, Yves Tanguy, Le Corbusier, Paul Delvaux, Wifredo Lam, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Balthus, Leonora Carrington, Zao Wou Ki, Sam Francis, sculptors Theodore Roszak, Raymond Mason and Reg Butler, and several other important artists, including the work of Henri Matisse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matisse
