巴布羅·畢加索

pencil on paper, dated Ier Septembre 46 on the revers

Private Collection, USA (acquired from the artist. Sold: Sotheby's, New York, 11th May 2000, lot 286)
Purchased at the above sale by the late owner

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount in the top two corners, floating in the mount. The sheet has been folded and is showing one vertical and three horizontal creases. Apart from some very slight time staining at the extreme edges, this work is in good condition. Colours: In comparison with the printed catalogue illustration, the paper tone is considerably less yellow in the original.
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Femme dansant et jouant du tambourin (Françoise) dates from September 1946, a few months after Françoise Gilot agreed to live with Picasso after a period of persistent invitations from the artist. Earlier that year in April, Picasso painted La Femme-fleur (fig.1), one of his most famous images of Françoise, and one of his most important works of the 1940s. This painting began as a portrait of Gilot seated but was gradually transformed into a depiction of the subject as a flower, with only the features of the face giving the plant form a human appearance. As Michael C. Fitzgerald wrote, this abstraction of Gilot’s features would become typical of Picasso’s depictions of her: ‘Picasso’s portraits of Françoise […] were not drawn from life; yet the dialogue between artist and subject influenced their form. Françoise was not interested in truly naturalistic images, and, unlike in the cases of Picasso’s other wives and mistresses, there are almost none that reproduce her features strictly’ (M.C. Fitzgerald in Picasso and Portraiture (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996, p. 416).

 

Fitzgerald notes further that Picasso once told Gilot: ‘You’re like a growing plant… I’ve never felt impelled to portray anyone else this way’ (ibid., p. 422), and in the present work we see that the image of the growing plant continued to influence Picasso’s depictions of Gilot. In Femme dansant et jouant du tambourin (Françoise) the figure of Françoise, dancing and playing the tambourine, is enclosed within a curving, elegantly flowing leaf-form. And just as Picasso depicted her hair and breasts within the schematic shape of La Femme-fleur, in the present work it is the rounded shapes of her hair and breasts that determine the looping curves of the overall form. Originating from the intricacy of the woman’s hair, the rhythmic line that dominates the composition becomes its defining element, suggesting the music and dance the sitter is absorbed in. Continuing the project begun with La Femme-fleur, this striking drawing shows Picasso’s complex vision, as he developed a new formal vocabulary to depict his muse.