Everything is difficult: an arm, a hand. You make a head but then you have to attach the legs. . . . That’s why I often make a head, very large or very small. It’s not about simply listing things, adding them together. A head plus arms, plus a torso, plus legs.
Pablo Picasso
Picasso spent the summers of 1928 and 1929 with his wife Olga and their son, Paulo, in Dinard, a seaside town on the Breton coast. During these months he was torn by conflicting loves, because Marie-Thérèse Walter, his mistress, was also there. The series of bathers on the beach, and the motif of the beach hut in particular, are thus an evocation of the lovers’ many secret rendezvous. The artist transforms the classical bather into a creature with deconstructed anatomy, albeit one of great lightness. At the same time, the tendency of flesh to become bone or stone would characterize the works of his so-called Boisgeloup period, named after the château Picasso bought in 1930. In his paintings, as with his work in plaster or on paper, the parts of the body become independent in a free articulation that emphasizes the sensuality of the woman with whom the painter is in love. At the end of the 1920s, the tone darkens, and his figures are stiffer, frozen in melancholic postures before exploding in embraces with a heightened violence—new incarnations of the “disturbing strangeness” celebrated by surrealism.
Paul Haesaerts (1901–1974), director
An excerpt from Visit to Picasso (Visite à Picasso), 1949
Film
Produced by Art et Cinéma. © Eyeworks
Running time: 2 minutes, 15 seconds
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Pregnant Woman
(Petite Femme enceinte)
Vallauris, 1948
Bronze
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP333
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
The Bathers (Les Baigneuses)
Biarritz, summer 1918
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP61
Picasso painted this small canvas while on honeymoon in Biarritz in 1918 with the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, whom he had met in Rome the previous year. As a far departure from the cubist aesthetic, this painting marks a return to a neoclassical line and evokes the influence of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. In an explicit reference, the bather in the foreground adopts a posture borrowed directly from Ingres’s Turkish Bath. The graceful pose of the three bathers, accentuated by the disproportionate lengthening of their arms and legs, is further magnified by the attention paid to their bathing suits.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bathers Watching a Plane (Baigneuses regardant un avion)
Juan-les-Pins, summer 1920
Oil on plywood
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP69
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Reclining Bather (Baigneuse allongée)
Boisgeloup, 1931
Bronze
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP290
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bather with a Ball (Baigneuse au ballon)
Dinard, September 1, 1929
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP118
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bather (Baigneuse)
Dinard, August 6, 1928
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP106
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bathers on the Beach (Baigneuses sur la plage)
Dinard, August 12, 1928
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP108
Picasso painted these two pictures while in Dinard, a seaside resort on the Breton coast where he stayed with his family during the summer of 1928. They evoke things the artist would have seen on the beach, such as the spectacle of almost nude bodies in motion. Here the anatomical forms are no more than geometric figures in a state of equilibrium. A few attributes, such as eyes, breasts, genitals, and hair, are defined by simple lines. In this hallucinatory—almost surrealist—vision, only the backdrop of the beach, with its rocks and bathing huts, remains attached to the expression of a certain reality.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Large Bather (Grande Baigneuse)
Paris, May 26, 1929
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP115
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Head of a Woman (Tête de femme)
Boisgeloup, 1931
Bronze
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP300
In early 1930, Picasso purchased a château in Boisgeloup, a small village in the Normandy countryside, located a few hours from Paris. Taking advantage of more space, the artist set up a sculpture studio in one of the old stables. The sculptures of this period—made from plaster, and then cast in bronze—bear witness for the most part to the passionate love that bound him to Marie-Thérèse Walter. Her atypical physical features, particularly her nose, are amplified and strongly eroticized in the many female sculptures she inspired Picasso to make during that time.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Woman Throwing a Stone (Femme lançant une pierre)
Paris, March 8, 1931
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP133
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bather (Baigneuse)
Dinard, August 15, 1928
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Jacqueline Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1990. MP1990-14
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bathers with a Ball (Baigneuses au ballon)
Paris, December 4, 1932
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP143
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bathers on the beach, III
(Baigneuses sur la plage. III)
Paris, November 22, 1932
Etching on copper
Proof on paper, printed by the artist
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP2211
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bathers on the beach, III
(Baigneuses sur la plage. III)
Paris, November 22, 1932
Etching on copper
Proof on paper, printed by the artist
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP2212
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bathers on the beach, III
(Baigneuses sur la plage. III)
Paris, November 22, 1932
Etching on copper
Proof on paper, printed by the artist
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP2213
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Bathers on the beach, III
(Baigneuses sur la plage. III)
Paris, November 22, 1932
Etching on copper
Proof on cardboard, printed by the artist
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979, MP2214
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Woman in the Red Armchair (Femme au fauteuil rouge)
Boisgeloup, January 27, 1932
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP138
Here Picasso is pushing one of his favorite representational motifs to its limits: a woman seated in an armchair. The model, Marie-Thérèse Walter, is no longer recognizable, as her body has been reduced to an assembly of organic and mineral forms. The dialogue between Picasso’s painting and sculpture has perhaps never been as pronounced as through this canvas. The artist appears to be sketching out a design for a sculpture whose entire composition seems to be barely balanced on the sphere.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Figures by the Sea (Figures au bord de la mer)
Paris, January 12, 1931
Oil on canvas
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979. MP131
With volume taking pride of place, the figures in this large painting form an intimate dialogue with Picasso’s sculptures of the same period. The contrasts obtained through a limited color palette make the couple stand out against the shallow background. The bodies are structured by an arrangement of mineral forms, captured in a balance of harmonious tension. The dramatic intensity of this monumental coupling on a beach is fully expressed in the raw and brutal kiss exchanged by the two figures.
