Painted on 7 November 1964, Nu allongé et buste d'homme comes from the wealth of imagination which characterizes Picasso’s finest late work. Alongside his musketeers and matadors, Picasso’s highly expressive painter and model series stands at the heart of his work from this period and most evocatively symbolizes the artist’s life and work.
Among the series, Nu allongé et buste d'homme is exceptional for its immediacy; the male figure at left, a stand-in for Picasso, confronts the viewer directly. While most related canvases feature the looming presence of the painter at left, rarely do such figures have such a commanding outward gaze. The painter-model dynamic pervades the present work, though absent are the artist’s signature tools of easel, brush and palette. Remarkable as well is the sense of agency with which the model is endowed; she is not.mes rely the subject but is an active participant, her arm and regard directed toward the bearded figure before her.
In the years following the present work, Picasso developed a number of variations on this theme, always characterized by a great spontaneity in brushwork and coloration, and an extraordinary creative energy. While in the later variations men and women are rendered in assorted cost.mes s, often playing at the roles of musicians or musketeers (see fig. 1), in the 1963-64 series the protagonists are unmistakably the artist himself and the model he is painting.
Throughout this series, the figure of the painter often occupies the left-hand side of the composition while the nude female model occupies the right half. In Nu allongé et buste d'homme, the male figure, a recognizable avatar of the artist himself, beholds a female nude reminiscent of the women seen in canvases by Titian and Velazquez (see fig. 2). With its foundation in this trajectory of art history, the present work stands as a modern allegory on this historic theme.
While an undercurrent of sexuality pervades much of Picasso’s oeuvre, from his early depictions of the demi-monde in Paris to his groundbreaking cubist masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the artist’s later works took on a more personal significance. Closely related to his intimate relationships, Picasso’s figures began to reflect the attributes of his lovers and partners at the t.mes , from Marie-Therese Walter’s curvaceous figure in the early 1930s and Dora Maar’s chic maquillaged visage later that decade to Jacqueline Roque’s large eyes and dark hair evinced in his work from the 1950s onward. The female figure in the present work was certainly inspired by Jacqueline, his second wife and last love (see fig. 3).
As the artist reckoned with his legacy and virility toward the end of his life, his work became even more enhanced with erotic tension. The present painting is imbued with a characteristic sense of seduction, heightened by the distance between the two figures and their unflinching gazes. The charged atmosphere is further underlined by the vivid and emphatic use of color which lends a playful intensity to the work.
An inspired homage to Old Master painters and the legacy of the artist-model relationship, the auto-biographical Nu allongé et buste d'homme is a test.mes nt to Picasso’s bravura and creative power. Held in the same family collects ion for nearly 50 years, it comes to auction for the first t.mes .
The Market for Picasso’s Painter and Model Series
