Pablo Picasso

Estate of the artist

Cannes, Centre d'Art La Malmaison, Picasso, Le Nu en liberté, Collection Marina Picasso, 2013, n.n.

Executed on thick white laid paper, not laid down, floating in the mount, fixed in the corners and in the centre of each edge. The impression left by the artist's pencil on the verso is visible on the recto. The edges are uneven with associated minor scuffs and nicks and one horizontal flattened crease above the signature. There is some light time staining to the extreme edges. There are scattered black media marks (inherent to the artist's process) and a some light spots of foxing, notably towards the top of the composition and near the right edge. Overall this work is in excellent original condition.
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In 1943 Picasso met Françoise Gilot, a young painter with whom he began a relationship the following year. Brassaï described the young woman at the beginning of the affair as follows: “very young […], passionate about painting, eager to get advice, anxious to show her talent […]. I was stunned by this young girl’s vitality, by her tenacity to overcome obstacles. She irradiated an impression of freshness and a stirring vivacity…” (Brassaï, Conversations avec Picasso, Paris, 1964, p. 260). 

During the years they lived together, Picasso immortalised the young woman’s harmonious face and voluptuous curves many times, reflecting the serenity he experienced in her company until 1953. A recurring stylistic figure emerges from these many works, the Femme-fleur, the quintessence of sensuality and of Françoise Gilot’s solar beauty.

The present work is a remarkable example of Picasso’s formal simplification which he began exploring from 1945 in order to depict his muse. As Brigitte Léal notes, Françoise was at the origin of a new language entirely devoted to her by Picasso “all in curves and circles […] restoring the fullness of shapes and underlining characteristic lines” (quoted in Picasso, Une nouvelle dation (exhibition catalogue), Paris, 1990, p. 168). With its simplified style and treatment of matter and shapes, the present work is a crystallisation of Picasso’s aesthetic preoccupations during the beginning of the post-war period.