Between 1917 and 1924, Picasso designed cost.mes s and theatrical scenery in collaboration with the Ballet Russes, an itinerant ballet company headed by the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Picasso’s work for the Ballet Russes would bring him to Rome, Barcelona, Madrid and London. The present work was executed in London in early May of 1919, while the company was in rehearsals for the debut of Le Tricorne (The Three-Cornered Hat), a revolutionary ballet set in Spain that includes the simplified technique of flamenco, a folkloric Spanish style of dance.

In the present work, Picasso depicts two company dancers, Vera Nemtchinova and Félix Fernández García, with a third, unknown dancer observing in repose. Félix’s central placement in the composition alludes to his key role in the creation of Le Tricorne working as a Spanish expatriate in London. After catching Diaghilev’s eye while performing flamenco at the Café Novedades in Seville in 1916, Félix was invited to join the Ballets Russes as a teacher and dancer and taught the intricate footwork and rhythms of flamenco to classically trained ballet dancers like Véra Nemtchinova. In the drawing, the couple dances with their arms akimbo, carriages upright, and hips relaxed, embodying the sensuality and dynamism inherent to flamenco. The studio, rendered with feathery pencil marks, nearly disappears behind Véra and Félix as they dance as if to signal the transportative power of their choreography.

Véra Nemtchinova et Félix dansant is an outstanding example of Picasso’s post-Great War oeuvre, for by this point he had moved away from the other Cubists—instead orienting himself toward more representational values and creating works that were deeply indebted to tradition. Picasso’s classical training and familiarity with art of antiquity is evident in the exaggerated rendering of the dancers’ limbs and clothing. Vera’s muscular arms and legs splay outwards to create a composition not unlike the famed ancient statue of Laocoön and His Sons (fig.1). Her and Félix’s upturned gazes harken back to Laocoön’s own, and the heavily shaded folds of Félix’s blouse recall the weighty, almost-moistened drapery typical of Hellenistic sculpture (fig. 2). Though Picasso’s forms borrow heavily from the Hellenistic period of antiquity, the Spaniard‘s style ignores Greek principles of idealized naturalism and shows a preference for creating a sense of drama and movement through disproportionate physical mass.

Tragically, Félix Fernández García never got to see Le Tricorne debut at the Alhambra Theater. Just days after Picasso created the present work, Félix was committed to Long Grove Asylum in Surrey. Rumor and intrigue obscure the whole truth of what happened to the virtuosic dancer. Some believe that Diaghilev orchestrated Félix’s institutionalization to avoid outrage after he cast another dancer as the lead in Le Tricorne. Evidence for this sinister plot includes the fact that Diaghilev announced Félix Fernández García’s death at a show in 1922, while in actuality Félix lived at Long Grove until 1944. Nevertheless, it is more likely that the dancer was genuinely suffering from a mental health crisis at the t.mes of his admittance and Diaghilev told the lie to preserve his friend’s memory at a t.mes when mental illness was deeply stigmatized. Whatever is the truth, Picasso’s outstanding work on paper, Véra Nemtchinova et Félix dansant, captures Félix’s immense, almost hypnotic talent as he performs one of his final dances with the Ballet Russes.