Have a look at this painting: It's Pablo Picasso's extraordinary 1953 portrait of his partner and muse, Françoise Gilot, Femme Assise en Costume Vert, which sold at Sotheby's New York for $20,946,000 in May 2021.
It's an extraordinary outburst of tangled emotion and technical brilliance from a tormented psyche. While Picasso had produced an impressive body of work testifying to the joy he experienced with Gilot and their children, this mesmerizing painting reflects the tensions between the two artists in the late stage of their relationship, as well as Picasso's continued stylistic versatility. As such, it is rare within the artist's exhaustive and prolific oeuvre.
Femme Assise en Costume Vert belongs to a group of portraits Picasso created in the late winter of 1952 and the early spring of 1953, that depict Gilot during the couple's time living with their two children, Claude and Paloma, at the villa La Galloise in Vallauris, France.
Prefiguring his bold planar sheet metal sculpture from the 1950s and 1960s, Femme Assise en Costume Vert recalls Picasso's pioneering Cubist compositions in its angular and delineated form, as well as his tortured portraits of Dora Maar from the late 1930s and early 1940s. In its striking evocation of form and elegantly restrained palette, Femme Assise en Costume Vert is a profound and highly technical painting, marking the culmination of Picasso and Gilot's personal and artistic collaboration.
"Picasso's female portraits are like a diary of his life and love, and it is so exciting to be able to turn to Francoise Gilot's chapter. This 1953 work is a magnificent culmination of their relationship and its impact on Picasso's art."
Picasso first met Gilot in May 1943, when he was still entangled in a turbulent relationship with the Surrealist artist Dora Maar. Gilot quickly became Picasso's muse and, eventually, his partner, as her youthful vigour inspired a new direction in his portraiture. Over the following decade, the artist produced an impressive body of work reflecting the joy he experienced with Gilot and with the two children that they had together.
During the time in which Femme Assise en Costume Vert was executed, Picasso and Gilot's relationship was deteriorating. Gilot was aware of Picasso's infidelity and whilst he attempted to persuade her to stay, she was determined to leave and pursue her career as an artist. In response to this, Picasso painted numerous portraits of his partner, many of which show Gilot either seated in an armchair, or involved in domestic activity; it is as though Picasso felt in painting her that he could keep her as a presence in his life. But only a few months after Femme Assise en Costume Vert was painted, Gilot would leave Picasso to begin a life of her own in Paris with their two children.
In Femme Assise en Costume Vert, Picasso employs two painterly tropes often associated with his depictions of Gilot: the primacy of line and the colour green. In the early years of their relationship, Picasso depicted Gilot as inherently linked with the natural world and this painting features the rich, vegetal green evoking this idea, whilst incorporating a clear linear demarcation of form. The striking intensity of the work is achieved through Picasso's balance between monochrome passages and isolated segments of vibrant color. Through this fragmenting of the picture plane, Picasso develops the linear style with which his portraits of Gilot are often associated. Unlike the soft and fluid lines of earlier portrayals, this work retains an almost sculptural quality that prefigures his work with sheet metal.
'Picasso employs two painterly tropes often associated with his depictions of Gilot: the primacy of line and the colour green'
The image of the seated woman was employed frequently by Picasso throughout his career. Often the armchair is employed as a means of framing the figure, however, the unusual angle in Femme Assise en Costume Vert allows the chair to separate the monochrome elements of the figure's body from the background.
The tight weave of the chair is echoed in the hatched lines outlining Gilot's hair, richly patterned lattice-work motifs that anticipate elements of Picasso's seminal Femmes d'Alger paintings of 1954-55. In addition, the figure presented is not encased within the chair, as in previous compositions, but seems enthroned on it. There is a drama and dynamism to the work, amplified by the jagged lines and expressive use of black paint haloing the figure's head. In all its elements, the painting encapsulates Gilot's strength of character, Picasso's enduring respect for her, and his slipping hold on her.