Pablo Picasso

Sam Salz, New York

Acquired from the above on March 3, 1952

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Supplément aux années 1920-1922, Paris, 1975, vol. 30, no. 137, illustrated pl. 52

The Picasso Project (ed.), Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. Neoclassicism I, 1920-1921, San Francisco, 1995, no. 21-020, illustrated p. 170

Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso: from the Ballets to Drama (1917-1926), Barcelona, 1999, no. 961, illustrated p. 256

Very good condition. The sheet is hinged to an acid-free mount. There are tiny, expertly repaired tears at the top-left edge, top-right corner and bottom right edge. The edges of the paper are uneven. The color is bright, and the sheet is delicate but in stable condition.
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Picasso first depicted the image of a peasant couple asleep in the field in a series of pencil drawings executed in the summer of 1919, culminating in the tempera composition which is now in The Museum of Modern Art in New York (fig. 1). Josep Palau i Fabre suggests that Picasso would have witnessed the scene from a train, probably during a journey between Paris and the Côte d’Azur. "It would undoubtedly have been among the many sheaves of corn that passed before his eyes that the artist observed… the couple taking an after-work siesta. At first the couple rest hand in hand and resting on each other until finally, overpowered by the heat, they sleep as best they can, apart.  In both cases, their bodies form a single arabesque, completed by colour in one of the versions" (Josep Palau i Fabre, op. cit., p. 152).

The present work was executed in January 1921, when Picasso and his wife Olga were in Paris in anticipation of the birth of their son Paulo, born on February 4th. During this time Picasso’s output was very diverse, alternating between simple cubist line drawings and neo-classical figures. One theme, however, appears to be recurring during this period: a group of intertwined figures, whether they are voluminous neo-classical figures, bathers on the beach, a tender drawing of a mother and child or a bull attacking a horse. In this respect, the image of the entangled male and female bodies would have been of great interest to Picasso at this time, enabling him to combine a dynamic composition with an erotic undertone.