Under the Hammer

Bringing together works by the master himself, as well as photographs and ephemera, our new sale, Picassomania on 23 March in London, will celebrate his expansive oeuvre – as well as all things Picasso.

Here we ask Head of Sale and Director of Prints & Multiples, Lucia Tro Santafe, to share her highlights from the auction.

Lot 5

Pablo Picasso
Portrait de Jacqueline aux Cheveux Lisses

This striking portrait of Picasso’s last muse and second wife Jaqueline Roque is an outstanding example of the artist’s mastery of the printmaking technique of linocut.

Picasso and Jacqueline had met in 1953 when she was working at the Madoura pottery in Vallauris. They married in 1961 and remained together until the artist's death in 1973, a relationship that lasted longer than any other for Picasso. As his latest muse, she inspired hundreds of works and his admiration can be seen in this striking portrait which emphasizes her classical features with high cheekbones, straight nose and large eyes. Picasso presents a dual aspect to the portrait, combining half a frontal view with half a face in profile, creating tension between the direct gaze of the subject towards the viewer and the view looking inward.

Picasso was 78 years old when he took up the technique of linocut. He was now living permanently in the South of France where he had met a local younger printer named Hidalgo Arnéra with whom he started doing posters linocuts for his exhibitions of ceramics at Madoura and would continue to experiment in this exciting new technique creating approximately 150 linocuts. The current work is a proof before the edition of fifty and is dedicated by Picasso to the master printer Arnéra.

Lot 13

Pablo Picasso
Minotaure aveugle guidé par une Fillette II, from La Suite Vollard

This work is one of the most recognisable and admired prints from the Suite Vollard. The celebrated suite of 100 etchings executed by Picasso between 1930-1937 and commissioned by his dealer Ambroise Vollard. An etching of great complexity and intensity, Minotaure aveugle guidé par une Fillette II is the second of four consecutive prints dedicated to the subject in the suite. There is no doubt of the importance of this scene for the artist as he also did many drawings of the same subject.

Picasso is representing himself as his alter-ego, the Minotaur, but rather than the usual overt sexuality and virility associated with the mythological monster, the Minotaur appears here blind and vulnerable, in a dramatic night setting reminiscent in design of a scene from a Greek tragedy. The little girl guiding the creature represents Marie-Thérèse, Picasso's pregnant lover at the time to whom he had offered a dove, the symbol of peace she is carrying here.

The importance of this work could then be read both in its obsessive repetition in the artist's creative output of the time, as well as a pivotal, suspended moment in time in his personal life: uneasy in his deteriorating relationship with his wife Olga, expecting a child from his lover Marie-Thérèse, with the Spanish Civil War, Nazism and war growling rampant.

Lot 39

Pablo Picasso
Visage de faune

Another favourite from the sale is the special 22-carat gold repoussé plate, Visage de Faune. Picasso was introduced to the goldsmith François Hugo by their mutual friends Douglas Cooper and John Richardson. The fateful meeting resulted in the two artists creating an exceptional series of gold and silver plates, vases, medallions and compotiers over the course of two decades.

Picasso, already familiarised with the art of pottery produced at Madoura, became immediately fascinated by the process of creating a wax matrix for each new design, with Hugo warming the precious metals and beating it by hand into the matrix -resulting in the shimmering surface of every repoussé dish or medallion.

Together they created small editions of the silver dishes and gold medallions, as well as a single unique gold dish for each design. The present work, depicting the faun so beloved by Picasso during this period, is one of these precious unique objects, in fact, the first of its kind: a prototype for Picasso and Hugo’s creations in gold

Lot 52

Pablo Picasso
La Tauromaquia, 1959

La Tauromaquia is one of my favourite artist’s books by Picasso. Comprising 26 aquatint etchings on the art of bullfight and inspired by Goya’s series of prints of the same name, is a testament of Picasso’s love and obsession for bullfighting so clearly connected to his Andalusian heritage where bullfighting is celebrated as a national cultural institution.

It is said that Picasso made this series of 26 brush drawings on copper plates apparently in just three hours, after having attended a corrida in Arles beforehand. The spontaneity and simplicity of these scenes is facilitated by directly drawing with the brush on the copper plate and evokes a lightness in composition and dynamic alternation of contrasting light and dark.

Leaving large areas of the sheet blank, Picasso uses the contrast of the black figures against the white ground to recreate the ambience of the bullring under a bright afternoon sun.

Lot 91

Pablo Picasso
Pichet à glace

In 1946 Pablo Picasso famously made his first visit to Vallauris near Cannes, and there discovered a latent desire to create works of exceptional beauty in clay with Georges and Suzanne Ramié of the Madoura pottery.

He was driven by a desire to create sculptural objects full of the joyousness and mythological motifs that typified his Post-War output: vases, dishes, bowls, pitchers even ashtrays decorated with fauns, flute players and the animals of his arcadia. He worked slavishly; a passion for creating these objects had been unleashed.

Pichet à glace constitutes a fine example of Picasso’s creativity and achievements in the art of ceramic.