1960s After Pablo Picasso "Le Rêve", Vintage Period Cubist Full-Color Print

Details

Description

An excellent vintage period full-color print after Cubist painting "Le Rêve" (Dream, 1943) by Pablo Picasso. Printed in the 1960s, … Read more An excellent vintage period full-color print after Cubist painting "Le Rêve" (Dream, 1943) by Pablo Picasso. Printed in the 1960s, on one side. Hand tipped-in on a sheet of paper, then mounted on a board of heavy paper. Excellent condition - minor edge wear on the board, never framed.

Overall 11.5"W x 15.3"H
Image 6.80"W x 9.10"H

Le Rêve represents the lover and muse of the artist, Marie-Thérèse Walter. Their passionate relationship was the theme of an exhibition at the Tate Modern in the beginning of March 2018 named Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy. On this occasion Le Rêve will be on public display for the first time.

Picasso met Marie-Thérèse Walter in 1926 in Paris in front of the metro facing the Galeries Lafayette in Paris. She was 17 years old and him 45. He immediately rushed over to her to say “Hello, miss. You have a very interesting face. I would love to make your portrait. I’mu sure we’re going to do great things together, you and I.” This was true, as Walter became the main model for Picasso’s cubist and neo-classical paintings.

Few years after they met, Pablo Picasso painted Marie-Thérèse, who is now 24 years old, resting in an armchair during an afternoon in mid-January. The canvas, which was finished within a few hours, bears its weight in eroticism. The character’s hands rejoin at the intersection between her legs and form a triangle, a typical symbol of feminine anatomy. Her left breast is half uncovered, something which has always been more sensual in painting history than a total nude. The model’s face is both represented in frontal and profile views. Facing us, the young woman is sleeping: her morality is saved. But the profile view reveal a much wilder Marie-Thérèse. The two red lines which represented her lips in frontal view now draw a tongue licking what used to be the left part of her face – now representing something we won’t force the reader to imagine.

This piece of imagination was sold for the first time in 1941 for $7,000. In 1997, it was sold for 48 million, then the Casino owner Steve Wynn bought it for $60 million in 2001. The latter in his turn decided to sell it in 2006. A discretion sale is concluded with the collector Steven Cohen for $139 million. But before the due meeting, Wynn who had poor eyesight, had an unfortunate accident: his elbow struck the canvas, and a 20-cm large hole in the bottom left corner had the transaction cancelled. The canvas was restored in 2013 and the persistent Steven Cohen finally bought the canvas at Christie’s for 16 more million than seven years before. The work then becomes the most expensive Picasso ever sold, before The Women of Algiers dethroned it with its $179 million. See less