Buste d’homme, painted on 20 October 1969, is a stunning oil that epitomizes the best of Pablo Picasso’s late period, often dubbed “the Heroic Years.” Painted a little more than a week before his 88th birthday, Buste d’homme was first exhibited in a one-man show that Picasso planned in the hallowed halls of the Palais des Papes in Avignon (see fig. 1).

Each work displayed in this exhibition was hand selected by Picasso for inclusion. Its grand scale, sweeping Gothic arches and quatrefoil windows were ideally suited to the monumental scale and tone of Picasso’s paintings, many of which, including the present work, were thinly-veiled depictions of himself. This self-referential exhibition at the former seat of the Papacy was the ultimate act of self-canonization for the artist, who was already considered a god in the world of art. This would be the first of two spectacular showings of Picasso’s late works in Avignon, but the only one held during the artist’s lifet.mes . Buste d’homme, which featured prominently on the great stone walls of the Chapel of Clement VI, is a stunning example of the magisterial works on view.

As Marie-Laure Bernadac describes, this monumental exhibition witnessed works "hung unframed, in tiers, and arranged in series, an exuberant and colourful procession of cavaliers, couples, nude women and solemn portraits filled the bare walls of the chapel…. An art ‘full of sound and fury’, in which everything moves and resonates, hurrying the eye from one canvas to the next amid the clatter of sabres, the sweep of plumes, the twist of bodies, the wild, visionary eyes, the strident colors, the frenzy of the brushwork: Picasso is presenting us with his artistic last will and test.mes nt” (Exh. Cat., London, The Tate Gallery, Late Picasso, 1988, pp. 91-92).

The present work is a remarkable example of Picasso's mature style; brimming with painterly verve and stylish invention. The artist's astonishing capacity for handling paint is wonderfully present in Buste d’homme. Lustrous passages of color cover the whole canvas endowing the figure with a startlingly vivid presence. Throughout his oeuvre, Picasso's images of the male figure embody masculine power, and are rendered with a bravuric intensity “I have less and less t.mes and I have more and more to say” commented Picasso in his last decade (quoted in Klaus Gallwitz, Picasso Laureatus, Lausanne and Paris, 1971, p. 166), and the freedom and spontaneity of his mature work, together with the recourse to archetypal figures and symbols is visual evidence of this.

The seemingly limitless energy that characterizes so much of his work is extant in this final burst of creativity, as well as a conscious decision to allow himself total liberty with both style and subject matter. Having gone through so many phases of stylistic and technical experimentation, Picasso now pared down his style in order to paint monumental works in quick, spontaneous brushstrokes. Rather than ponder the details of human anatomy and perspective, the artist isolated those elements of his subject that fascinated and preoccupied him, and depicted them with an extraordinary sense of wit entirely his own. This work and eight other canvases (Zervos vol. XXXI, nos. 464-71; see figs. 2 and 3) were painted in a burst of focused activity from 15 October to 20 October 1969. These referential figures—self-portraits in truth—are posed in half-length, seated and sporting a hat. The background colors are bright, the faces painted in strong, assured swirls and strokes of the brush.

Several years earlier, Picasso and Jacqueline moved to their new residence of Notre Dame de Vie. La Californie, where they had lived since 1955, had become surrounded by other buildings, and constant attention from those who sought Picasso’s ear. Simonetta Fraquelli discusses this change in scenery and its impact on Picasso’s work: “In a bid for more privacy, Picasso and Jacqueline moved to the hilltop villa ‘Notre Dame de Vie’ near Mougins in 1961. The artist became more reclusive and this is reflected in his paintings which are more strikingly intimate and self-reflective, often concerned with his own mortality. For him, passivity signified death and the energy of his last works, with their summary abbreviations and speed of execution, demonstrate his desire to recapture a childlike form of expression. As the palette becomes looser and brightly colored, the willfully naïve style serves to emphasize their spirit of directness and intimacy” (Exh. Cat., London, National Gallery, Picasso, Challenging the Past, 2009, p. 145).

It was here on his hilltop in Notre Dame de Vie that Picasso would further deepen his study of the old masters. According to Elizabeth Cowling “In old age, when he no longer went to Paris and left his country house outside Mougins with the greatest reluctance, Picasso immersed himself in masterpieces like Poussin’s Massacre of the Innocents (1626-27), Rembrandt’s Night Watch (1642) and a van Gogh Self Portrait (1889) by projecting slides blown up to a gigantic scale onto his studio wall” (ibid., pp. 12-13; see figs. 4 and 5).

Vincent van Gogh was the artist Picasso admired most and he referred to him frequently throughout his career. In Picasso’s final decade, Van Gogh came to be the greatest source of inspiration as John Richardson relates: “Of all the artists with whom Picasso identified, van Gogh is the least often cited but probably the one that.mes ant the most to him in later years. He talked of him as his patron saint, talked of him with intense admiration and compassion, never with any of his habitual irony or mockery. Van Gogh, like Cézanne earlier in Picasso’s life, was sacrosanct…. Why, one wonders, should a great artist want to paint self-portraits in the guise of another great artist?... The answer is surely that in losing your identity to someone else you gain a measure of control over them…I suspect that Picasso also wanted to galvanize his paint surface…with some of the Dutchman’s Dyonisian fervor. The surface of the late paintings has a freedom, a plasticity, that was never there before; they are more spontaneous, more expressive and more instinctive than virtually all his previous work (Exh. Cat., London, Tate Gallery and Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Late Picasso, Paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints 1953-1972, 1988, pp. 31-34).

The last decade of Picasso’s production has historically been the least understood amongst critics and scholars. Painting in a representational style he went against the grain of pure abstraction. The year 1969 would mark a culminating point in the career of the twentieth-century’s arguably greatest artist. The few self-portraits of the period represent a psychological projection of a complex and multifaceted identity, illustrating the unruly amalgam of influences and contrary personas that made up the mental backdrop of this protean artist. As Susan Galassi commented in 2009: “With this last chapter he closes the circle of his art and at the same t.mes opens the way for a younger generation of artists, those who followed the abstract expressionists and reacted against their dogmatic cult of originality. For the 1960s pop artists and the succeeding generations of post modernists Picasso’s variations entered into the mainstream of iconic masterpieces and served themselves as source for re-creation” (Exh. Cat., London, National Gallery, Picasso, Challenging the Past, 2009, p. 117). It was not just Picasso’s last years that proved so inspirational to the new generation of artists. His immediacy and constant regeneration across his storied career affected all who came in contact. Speaking of his early years as the painter Francis Bacon stated “You know, I didn’t begin painting until I was thirty and I never learnt it at school. One day, I tried it, without really knowing why. Maybe because I liked painting. I think I’d seen an exhibition of Picasso (quoted in Exh. Cat., Paris, Musée Picasso, Bacon, Picasso: The Life of Images, 2005, p. 34; see fig. 6)