Pablo Picasso | Portrait de Femme II

Pablo Picasso | Portrait de Femme II
Portrait de Femme II, 1955
Lithograph
26 1/10 × 19 7/10 in | 66.4 × 50 cm
Frame included
Edition of 50
Part of a limited edition set
Includes a Certificate of Authenticity

Pablo Picasso | Portrait de Femme II

Pablo Picasso | Portrait de Femme II. This abstract, three-quarter profile is of Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline Roque. The couple met during the summer of 1952 whilst Roque was working at Georges and Suzanne Ramié’s Madoura pottery works in Vallauris, the studio where Picasso made his ceramics in the South of France.

The couples love endured until the artist’s death in 1973, Picasso adored Jacqueline so much so that for seventeen of the twenty years the couple spent together – the longest relationship of Picasso’s life – Roque was the only female Picasso painted. When Picasso embarked on his late, great period, his biographer John Richardson succinctly defined and characterised as ‘l’époque Jacqueline.’ In this lithograph, Picasso bestows Roque with an elegant, sphinx-like appearance. The straight line of the nose which extends directly from the forehead to the tip is particularly evocative of these ancient Egyptian sculptures, as well as in the calm gaze in her characteristically eyes.

Pablo Picasso 1881-1973

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.