PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) Head of a Pacifist... Lot 34

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) Head of a Pacifist Warrior Ink on paper Dated 5.10.51.VII lower left 66 x 50,8 cm Provenance Estate of the artist Marina Picasso (granddaughter of the artist; acquired from above) Private collection, United States Exhibition London, Fischer Fine Art, Ltd, "Pablo Picasso, Drawings from the Marina Picasso Collection", 1984, n°34, reproduced in the catalogue. Barcelona, Museu Picasso, "Picasso: Guerra y Paz", 2004, n°225, reproduced in the catalogue Liverpool, Tate Liverpool; Vienna, Albertina Humblebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, "Picasso, Peace and Freedom", 2010-2011, n°93, reproduced in the catalogue. Mr Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work. During the 1920s and 1930s, Picasso made a habit of spending his summers with his family on the French Riviera (he occasionally went to the Atlantic coast). As a native of Malaga, he felt a strong sense of belonging to the Mediterranean, to its artistic traditions, and his pleasure at being on these shores once again is reflected greatly in his work. Picasso was particularly fond of the area around Antibes and Juan-les-Pins, not only for the beach and the spacious villas but for the ancient associations of the places themselves (the modern town of Antibes is situated near the Greek site of Antipolis). He would later say "every time I come to Antibes, it attracts me more and more...I can't explain this attraction...in Antibes, this antiquity takes hold of me every time. » After the war, Picasso began to spend more and more time in the south of France, where in 1949 he acquired a villa in Vallauris, near the Madoura pottery. In an interview about their time together on the Côte d'Azur in the late 1940s and early 1959, Picasso's companion Françoise Gilot emphasized the importance of the myths of the classical world to the artist: "Picasso, in the pure Mediterranean tradition, was introduced to these stories from his childhood. He had completely assimilated them, and it was as if they had become the art of his being that he could reach every time the atmosphere of the Mediterranean brought him back to the times when the Gods walked on Earth in human form". The works of this period, and more specifically the ceramics, are full of mythological references and images of the sea. Marina Picasso's collection includes examples of her ceramic work; several long standard dishes that were part of the factory's regular production, fauns, fish, and other creatures that were the subject of paintings and drawings that Picasso made at the Château Grimaldi, now the Picasso Museum in Antibes. The artist was invited by the director of the local museum in the late summer of this year to use the castle as his studio. In the works he produced there, we find images of flute players dancing with Françoise Gilot, mixing mythological and personal iconography. When Picasso and Gilot returned to Paris at the end of the autumn, he left behind almost all of his production from Antibes, which he later donated to the museum, thus forming the basis of the present collection. However, he kept several drawings, such as Tête de guerrier pacifiste, which became part of Marina Picasso's collection.