Pablo Picasso

Estate of the artist
Jacqueline Picasso (acquired from the above)
Christine Ruiz-Picasso (daughter-in-law of the artist, acquired from the above)
Valery, Geneva
Knickerbocker Fine Arts, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Howard Weingrow, Long Island (in 1990)
Waddington Galleries, London
Private Collection, The Bahamas (acquired from the above in 1995)
Private Collection, Toronto
Philharmonic Center for the Arts, Naples, Florida
Acquired from the above in 2002 by the present owner

Avignon, Palais des Papes, Exposition Picasso, 1970-1972, 1973, no. 72, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Couple)

Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island Collects: The Figure and Landscape, 1870's to 1980's, 1990, illustrated in the catalogue

Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County Museum of Art, Intimate and Confidants in Art: Husbands, Wives, Lovers and Friends, 1993, illustrated in the catalogue

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1971-1972, vol. 33, Paris, 1978, no. 83, illustrated pl. 29

The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Final Years 1970-1973, San Francisco, 2004, no. 71-222, illustrated p. 191

Original canvas. The surface of the canvas is fresh and untouched. Under ultra-violet light, there is no evidence of retouching. This work is in excellent condition. Colors: Overall fairly accurate, although fresher in the original.
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Homme et Femme belongs to a group of large scale paintings on the theme of lovers that Picasso began in November 1968 and continued to painted until the last months of his life.  These oils are distinguished for their highly charged eroticism, which manifests to varying degrees of explicitness in each canvas (see figs. 1 and 2).  "Art is never chaste," Picasso famously remarked.  The present work, created in the last years of his life, makes the most out of that observation with this candid depiction.   In this picture, Picasso has monumentalized the couple, depicting them as vulnerable and sexual characters in a primordial state of nudity.   While it is commonly understood that these late depictions of men and women were references to Picasso and his wife Jacqueline, their greater significance as images of universal Man and Woman was a poignant statement for the artist at the end of his life.  It is his entire life's work has finally reached its conclusion with these representations of male and female bodies in their most primal states.

David Sylvester discussed the "raw vitality" that distinguished both the early and late Picasso: "The resemblance of figures in the 'Demoiselles' and in late Picasso to masked tribal dancers is as crucial as their scale in giving them a threatening force. It is irrelevant whether or not particular faces or bodies are based on particular tribal models: what matters is the air these personages have of coming from a world more primitive, possibly more cannibalistic and certainly more elemental than ours. Despite the rich assortment of allusions to paintings in the Renaissance tradition in favor or an earlier one, the flat unperspectival space of, say, medieval Catalan frescoes... At twenty-five, Picasso's raw vitality was already being enriched by the beginnings of an encyclopedic awareness of art; at ninety, his encyclopedic awareness of art was still being enlivened by a raw vitality" (David Sylvester, Late Picasso, Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, 1953-1972, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 144).