PROFILE FEMALE BUST

Buste de femme de profil

1932

Oil on canvas

116x73.5 cm

36.00 million

Marie-Thèrése Walter, one of Picasso’s favourite muses, is depicted on this big portrait, he had secret intimate relations with her while he was married to Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova. Rounded delicate lines, so typical of portraits of Marie, are contrasting here with the precisely drawn cross of the window frame. Muted but fresh colours show the romantic mood of the painter in love. The girl lowered her eyes and is writing something in her diary.

They got acquainted in a picture gallery in Paris. He just grabbed her hand and said: “I’m Picasso! We’ll do great deeds!” They started meeting secretly. Strident and fanciful Surrealism that reigned on his pictures then was gradually replaced by soft femininity, rounded sensitivity and delicate eroticism. However, Marie herself appears on his canvases only several years later. In 1935 their daughter Maya was born, and Olga Khokhlova left the painter.

Lyrical Surrealism of the early 1930s, when mostly Marie is depicted, is one of the peaks of the painter’s creative work and the priceless contribution into the history of arts of the 20th century.

Sold June 19, 2017 at Sotheby's London for £27 million