PABLO PICASSO Lot n° 547

Nu Assis. Colored linocut in dark brown, on beige-pink ground, on wove paper by Arches. (1962). Approx. 35 x 26.5 cm (sheet size approx. 63 x 44.5 cm). One of probably only 2 proofs of the 1st state. Signed and inscribed by the printer Hidalgo Arnéra at the lower margin "Femme nue assise 1962 - linogravure originale de Picasso". Additionally signed and inscribed again on verso "Linogravure Originale de Picasso". The female nude is one of Picasso's most important themes. He took up this motif again and again. In his late work, the nude, together with the motif of the artist and his model, becomes a particular focus. Since June 1961 Picasso has lived with his second wife Jacqueline Roque in Mougins, a village in the hills above Cannes. Almost obsessively he portrays her, her face, her body. Jacqueline Roque is 45 years younger than Picasso and has a similar short, stocky stature and large, radiantly dark eyes as the artist. The two met in 1953. Jacqueline quickly becomes Picasso's lover, muse and eventually wife. She is the last great female presence in Picasso's life and the subject of numerous paintings and prints produced over the next twenty years. Jacqueline first appears in Picasso's drawings in his series "The Painter and His Model," created in early 1954. While her striking profile appears again and again, especially in his lithographs and etchings in the second half of the 1950s, it is her body that Picasso depicts in his many depictions of the female nude and eroticism in the 1960s and early 1970s. With her tiny head above a monumental body, seated on a block-like structure, the nude in this painting has a raw physicality. This is accentuated through the medium of the linocut - the rough linear prominence of her body suggests a primitivism often associated with the woodcut. Her heavy hips and long hair recall the figure in a slightly earlier linocut - Grand nu dansant (4 March, Bloch 1085/Baer 1309) - which shows a lady with a large backside in a dancing pose. Common to both images is the double point of view that allows the buttocks to be seen simultaneously with the breasts - a Cubist tactic that the artist also employed at this time in portraits of Jacqueline's face, as in "Portrait de Jacqueline de face. I" and "Portrait de Jacqueline de face. II" (Bloch 1063) and "Jacqueline au bandeau de face" (Bloch 1069). This doubling of focus on the female nude would become a significant feature in his paintings and prints of the following ten years. Bloch 1086; Baer 1330 I (of II). Taxation: differential taxed plus 7% (VAT: Margin Scheme (non EU))