Pablo Picasso

Perls Galleries, New York

Maria Carlotta de Almeida, Rio de Janiero (acquired from the above in 1963)

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2004

The Art Gallery of Toronto & Montreal, The Museum of Fine Arts, Picasso and Man, 1964, no. 104, illustrated in the catalogue

Christian Zervos, "Les dernières oeuvres de Picasso," Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1929, vol. 4, illustrated p. 236 (with incorrect measurements)

Joan Merli, Picasso, el artista y la obra de nuestro tiempo, Buenos Aires, 1942, no. 364, illustrated p. 602

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1955, vol. 7, no. 246, illustrated pl. 98 (with incorrect measurements) 

The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, Toward Surrealism, 1925-1929, San Francisco, 1996, no. 29-010, illustrated p. 188 (with incorrect measurements) 

One of the most loaded images of Picasso's Surrealist production is his terrifyingly fantastic depiction of his wife, Olga, abstracted beyond the point of recognition.  Femme dans un fauteuil is among Picasso's most memorable pictures from 1929, as it is emblematic of both the personal and professional forces at play that year.  Olga had spent the first weeks of 1929 in a clinic recovering from a hemorrhaging condition, and now reemerged in Picasso's daily life. With Olga back on the scene and demanding attention, Picasso could no longer enjoy the company of his mistress Marie-Thérèse without interruption. Resentment, compounded by a superstitious fear of sick women, now overwhelmed Picasso, and he channeled his seething frustration into his art.  The resulting images are some of the most startling works he created to date and are among the most powerful images of the Surrealist era.  

The present work, which Picasso completed in early March of 1929, is a precursor to a larger composition, now in the collection of the Picasso Museum in Paris, that he would paint later that spring.  Both pictures feature the woman in an armchair, contorting her body in a pose that resembles Matisse's version of this same subject.  Details in Picasso's composition, most notably the bold, striped patterning of the upholstered armchair, suggest that Picasso may have been quoting Matisse directly.   But as John Richardson tells us in his biography of the artist, Olga's 'menacing' armchair serves an entirely different purpose in Picasso's painting:  "He had no intention, Picasso said, of painting bored-looking Seated Women ensconced in comfortable fauteuils.  He preferred to envisage his subjects 'caught in the trap of these armchairs like birds caught in a cage.  I want to chart the trail of flesh and blood through time.'  To Malraux, Picasso elaborated on this theme.  The armchair in which he sat his women 'implies old age or death, right. So too bad for her.  Or else the armchair is there to proetct her ... like Negro sculpture.'  Olga's fauteuil looks about as protective as an electric chair.  Its redness might refer to her hemorrhages, and the contorted right arm to the damaged right leg that put an end to her career as a dancer" (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, New York, 2007, p. 317).

Picasso was surely receptive to other formal influences during this time, ranging from the wiry sculptures created with Julio Gonzalez, to landmarks coast of Normandy, where he frequently took his family before acquiring a chateau in Boisgeloup in 1930.   The present work, as well as many of his compositions of bathers from this time, reflect the influence of the region. The rocky outcroppings of the Normandy coastline had long been inspirations for artists including Monet, and the triangulated figures that Picasso completed during this period are believed to be inspired by the cliffs of Etretat.  

In later years, Picasso would admit to the historian William Rubin that the harrowing images from this era were depictions of his aggrieved wife.  Olga Picasso, transformed here into a fierce vagina dentata, was at the time the victim of Picasso's unapologetic infidelity and domestic defiance.   Although she supposedly knew little of Picasso's liaison with Marie-Thérèse by this point, the couple's marriage was in turmoil and Picasso vented his frustrations through these radical manipulations of form.   As Richardson explains, Olga's outbursts brought about some of Picasso's most creative images: "By sticking her tongue out at him, cursing him in Russian, and telling him that he was not Paulo's father, which he so obviously was, Olga generated the rage, misogyny and guilt that fuels his shamanic powers.  However, for all the violence of his imagery and his cult of Sade, Picasso deplored physical violence.  To fight back at Olga, he used his paintbrush, and only resorted to force to protect himself.  These cruel paintings acted as lightening conductors, and apparently they worked" (ibid., p. 372).