Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do its bidding.
Pablo Picasso
You have to look for something that develops all by itself, something natural and not manufactured. Let it develop as it is as a natural form and not a form in art.
Pablo Picasso
“Late Picasso,” presented most notably in an exhibition at the Palais des Papes in Avignon in 1970, has long been controversial. In the early 1970s, Picasso caused a scandal with his eroticism and the flamboyant new direction of his style, which was freer and more expressionistic. In painting, the artist returned once again to the canonical subjects of the female nude and the kiss. Painted in broad strokes and imbued with tremendous vitality, these figures have a force that is rarely matched, although it can also be seen in the variations after the great masters that he began in the mid-1950s—and in later paintings where he summoned up seventeenth-century musketeers and hidalgos. Sexuality is obsessively present throughout, and subject to all styles and all gazes. The voyeur witnesses scenes of embraces whose depiction, multiple and multiplied, by an artist coming to the end of his life can be understood as a final act of resistance to impending death.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
The Painter and His Model (Le Peintre et son modèle)
Mougins, November 15, 1964
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Jacqueline Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1990. MP1990-31
An indispensable subject in Picasso’s art, the pairing of the painter and his model gives rise to endless variations in which the artist places the question of the creative act at the center of his work. In this version, the composition is structured by the vertical spine of the canvas, which separates the painter’s space on the left from that of his model on the right. The model’s foot, however, goes beyond its own representative space and into that of the artist, thus affirming the unbreakable bond between art and life.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Performance: Cupid venturing into the world of women
(Spectacle: L’Amour s’aventurant chez les femmes)
Mougins, February 11–March 16, 1970
Etching with scraper and drypoint on copper, 7th state
Proof on paper, printed by Crommelynck
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP3106
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Woman with a Pillow (Femme à l’oreiller)
Mougins, July 10, 1969
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Jacqueline Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1990. MP1990-35
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Old concupiscent and impotent man with a Spanish prostitute on his knees, sailor hiding his genitals, and gardener (Vieil homme concupiscent et impuissant avec une prostituée espagnole sur les genoux, marin se cachant le sexe, et jardinier)
Mougins, January 26–February 12, 1970
Etching on copper, 4th state
Proof on paper, printed by Crommelynck
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP3082
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Picasso, his art and his public (Picasso, son œuvre et son public)
Mougins, [March 20–22, 1968]
Etching on copper, 6th state
Proof on paper, printed by Crommelynck
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP3047
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Double self-portrait, Maja with a pigeon, removal man with woman and sculpture, aging funfair strongman, artist’s father with Ingresque bather in the background (Autoportrait dédoublé, Maja au pigeon, déménageur avec femme et sculpture, Hercule de foire vieillissant, père de l’artiste avec baigneuse ingresque au fond)
Mougins, January 25, 1970
Etching on copper, 2nd state
Proof on paper, printed by Crommelynck
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP3078
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Dreaming sailor with two women, couple, female onlooker and sculpture on a stool (Marin rêveur avec deux femmes, couple, spectatrice et sculpture sur un escabeau)
Mougins, January 31, 1970
Etching with scraper and drypoint on copper, 5th state
Proof on paper, printed by Crommelynck
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP3090
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
The Family (La Famille)
Mougins, September 30, 1970
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP222
This monumental canvas, characteristic of Picasso’s final period, is marked by an expressive touch and deceptively naive handling of the figures. The meticulous hairstyles and the richness of the figures’ costumes bear the imprint of the seventeenth century, as does the reduced color palette, which contributes to its deep, bright instances of chiaroscuro. Picasso exuberantly revisits the traditional genre of the family portrait and pays a final tribute to the painting of his predecessors.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Musician (Musicien)
Mougins, May 26, 1972
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP229
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Seated Young Girl (Jeune fille assise)
Mougins, November 21, 1970
Oil on plywood
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP225
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Reclining Nude and Man Playing the Guitar (Nu couché et homme jouant de la guitare)
Mougins, October 27, 1970
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP224
The musician, whether alone or accompanied, is a major, recurring figure in Picasso’s art. Here he depicts himself as a bearded guitarist in a powerfully erotic serenade scene. By creating an echo in terms of shape and color between the curves of the instrument and the contours of the female anatomy offered up to the viewer and the musician’s gaze, Picasso shows the intensity of the desire that continues to pervade his painting.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Sunday (Dimanche)
Mougins, October 3, 1971
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Jacqueline Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1990. MP1990-47
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Woman with a Baby Carriage (La Femme à la poussette)
Vallauris, 1950
Bronze
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP337
In 1950, Picasso was living and working in Vallauris, in southeast France. On his daily route to his studio, he would find random objects piled up and abandoned. He came up with the idea of recovering some of them to assemble into sculptures. For Woman with a Baby Carriage, Picasso combined pieces from a real baby buggy with the base of a frying pan and a handful of tart molds, completing the arrangement by modeling certain elements in plaster, such as the woman’s head and arms.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Studies for Women of Algiers, after Delacroix
(Études pour Les Femmes d’Alger, d’après Delacroix)
Paris, December 28, 1954
Ink on paper
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP1449
Paris, December 28, 1954
Ink on paper
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP1456
Paris, January 8, 1955
Ink on paper
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP1496
Between late 1954 and early 1955, Picasso painted a series of variations after Delacroix’s Women of Algiers in Their Apartment. With fifteen paintings, preceded by dozens of drawings, nine engravings, and two lithographs, this series was the first of such magnitude in the artist’s career. His approach was methodical: each work is studied alternatively in its general balance and details. Picasso underlines the resemblance of his companion Jacqueline to the woman with the hookah pipe. He also offers a contemporary rereading of Orientalist painting and revisits the theme of the harem. Through the succession of compositions on paper, some framed more tightly than others, this set allows us to perceive the fluidity and fertility inherent in the artist’s creative process, which would be documented on film during the summer of 1955 as The Mystery of Picasso (1956) by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Luncheon on the Grass, after Manet (Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe d’après Manet)
Vauvenargues, March 3–August 20, 1960
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP215
In 1954, Picasso began a series of variations on major works in the history of Western art. After spending time with Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, 1834) by Eugène Delacroix and The Ladies-in-Waiting (Las Meninas, 1656) by Diego Velázquez, the artist turned to Édouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863), devoting himself fully to this work of appropriation and interpretation primarily between the summer of 1959 and August 1960. The original figures have been shifted or removed, their poses and positions modified.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
The Young Painter (Le Jeune Peintre)
Mougins, April 14, 1972
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP228
Painted a year before Picasso’s death, this representation of a young painter is characterized by its extreme economy of means. Rapidly brushed onto a pristine background, leaving visible the white preparation of the canvas, the figure evolves into a character with an expression of complicity; the cape and hat are a nod to the picaresque world of which the artist was so fond. With the young painter’s disproportionate pupils and serene smile, facing the future, Picasso delivers a new embodiment of the passion that motivated him for more than eighty years and paves the way for the artists of the next generation.
