Pablo Picasso

Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York (acquired from the artist in 1951)
Jakob Goldschmidt, Berlin and New York (acquired from the above on February 15, 1954 and thence by descent)

 

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1944 à 1946, vol. 14, Paris, 1963, no. 13, illustrate pl. 8
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. Nazi Occupation, 1940-1944, San Francisco, 1999, no. 44-129, illustrated p. 367

On July 27, 1944, Picasso executed four preliminary drawings for a series of nine canvases that he would paint of a potted tomato plant.   It is most likely that these plants were growing at Marie-Thérèse's apartment at the Boulevard Henri IV, where Picasso moved to be with her and Maya at the beginning of August when fighting intensified between the Resistance and the German forces.  He must have considered this image a symbol of the "victory gardens" that were popular during the war, when food rations compelled civilians to grow their own produce on the window sills and balconies of their homes.  Paris would be liberated by the Allied forces later that month, but in the preceding weeks, chaos broke out on the city streets and the police and transit workers went on strike.  It was perhaps not without significance during these troubled t.mes s that Picasso chose to render the resilient tomato plant, as it continued to blossom and bear fruit. 

The genre of still-lifes was a significant component of Picasso's wart.mes production, as were portraits of his mistresses Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot.  These were all subjects that did not remind him of the trouble that had fallen upon Paris during the Occupation, and his concentration on these themes resulted in the most fruitful and imaginative production of still-lifes since his days as a Cubist at the beginning of the century.  To his public during this period, Picasso's wart.mes still-lifes held even greater meaning: they were an outward sign of the artist's perseverance during the war as a resident artist in Paris.