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PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) Combat de faune et de centaure signed “Picasso” (lower left); dated “2...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:125,000.00 - 150,000.00 USD
PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) Combat de faune et de centaure signed “Picasso” (lower left); dated “2...

PABLO PICASSO

(1881-1973)

Combat de faune et de centaure

signed “Picasso” (lower left); dated “22 août 46 IV” (on the reverse)

India ink and watercolour on paper

50.8 x 65.4 cm (20 x 25 3⁄4 in.)

executed in August 1946

Estimate: £85,000–100,000

$125,000–150,000





Provenance

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired from the artist)

Galerie Chalette, New York

Maxwell Davidson III, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner on January 21, 1974




Exhibited

Hollywood, CA., Louis Stern Fine Arts, Picasso – Face to Face. an Exhibition of Works in all Media, September 17-October 31, 1998, n.n.




Literature

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Paris, 1983, vol. 14 (Oeuvres de 1944 à 1946), no. 205 (illustrated, pl. 92)

The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Sculpture. A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue: Liberation and Post-War Years, 1944-1949, San Francisco, 2000, p. 102, no. 46-132 (illustrated)

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Picasso and Françoise Gilot settled in Cap d’Antibes in July 1946. This period was one of great happiness for the artist and his new mistress, who became pregnant that year. The war was over and a new optimism entered the artist’s work, with mythological, even Arcadian themes becoming prevalent.
This composition, despite its apparently violent subject, is typical of the classical lyricism of the works of the period. It is part of a large series of drawings and watercolours that represent fauns and centaurs sparring with one another. The series varies from the representational to the most simplified, minimal depictions of the subject (Zervos vol. 14, nos. 203-204 and 207-221). These works relate to the decorative panels that Picasso executed for the Château de Grimaldi in Antibes, perhaps most notably Joie de Vivre (Zervos, vol. 14, no. 289). The sense of conflict in these works, unlike those that he produced during the German Occupation of France, has more to do with erotic engagement than military conflict:
“Picasso elaborated the imagined and real confrontations between himself and Françoise, but, increasingly, their personal relationship became absorbed into larger themes. In August he made a series of drawings that show a pitched battle between a faun and a centaur and end with the faun standing in mourning over his foe. Yet Picasso immediately proposed an alternative: the series resumes with the centaur’s resurrection, now as a beautiful woman whose dance is joined by the joyous faun. The woman bears Françoise’s features and Françoise’s birth sign of Sagittarius links her with the centaur as well” (Brigitte Léal, Picasso and Portraiture, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996, p. 424)