Nude with green leaves and bust

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Nude with green leaves and bust
Pablo Picasso , 1932
Oil on canvas
162 × 130 cm
Privately owned

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Nude with green leaves and bust , also naked, green leaves and bust , Spanish: Desnudo, hojas verdes y busto , French: Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur , English: Nude, green leaves, and bust , is an oil painting by the Spanish painter, graphic artist and sculptor Pablo Picasso from 1932.

The picture

The portrait, 162 cm × 130 cm picture with lively green and blue tones as well as pastel pink is supposed to show Picasso's lover and model Marie-Thérèse Walter , lying undressed under a sparsely leafy plant in front of a blue screen . To the right above her is a white plaster bust , of which Marie-Thérèse is also said to have stood as a model. The head, looking to the left, stands on a pedestal with a suggested Ionic fluting . The lower left edge of the picture shows three apples of different sizes on a small table. It is signed Picasso in the upper right .

Work history

The picture was taken - during a single day - on March 8, 1932, during one of Picasso's most productive creative periods. It had been in the possession of Picasso's art dealer Paul Rosenberg since 1936 , who had bought it directly from the artist. In the early 1950s, it was bought by California real estate tycoon Sidney F. Brody for his wife, Frances. Since then it has been privately owned by the family. It was shown publicly only once, in 1961 on Picasso's 80th birthday at the Bonne Fête Monsieur Picasso exhibition at UCLA Art Gallery in Los Angeles . Brody was a sponsor of the UCLA Art Gallery and was the initiator of this exhibition, which featured more than 170 works by Picasso. Ms. Brody served as President of the UCLA Art Council Board of Directors .

The painting Nude with Green Leaves and Bust was considered almost unknown, only in the catalog for this exhibition it was shown full-page under catalog number 25 in black and white. It is also known from a black and white portrait photo of Picasso in a suit from 1932 by Cecil Beaton , which he proudly poses in front of this picture; however, it is depicted there with a distorted perspective and also a little hidden by it.

In 2011, the picture was loaned to the London gallery Tate Modern by its current owner and thus made available to the public again for the first time.

Auction record

At an auction by Christie's auction house in New York on May 4, 2010, a telephone bid from an unknown bidder turned it into one of the most expensive works of art to be sold on the auction market. Conor Jordan of Christie's described the painting as “fresh from the market, in wonderful condition, almost unknown and of romantic obsession”. The hammer price for the painting was $ 95 million, with the usual surcharge it was $ 106,482,500, about 80 million euros. The highest price to date for a work by Picasso was $ 104,200,000 for Boy with a Pipe from 1905, achieved in 2004 at Sotheby’s in New York. Part of the sales proceeds will go to the Huntington Library, Art Collections in San Marino , California and the Botanical Garden there, of which Brody was a board member.

literature

  • "Bonne fête Monsieur Picasso" from southern California collectors , Committee on Fine Arts Productions for the UCLA Art Galleries, 1961

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Enrique Mallen, On-line Picasso Project: OPP.32: 167, March 8, 1932, oil on linen, 162 × 130 cm
  2. ^ The columns of the Temple of Athena in Athens have a comparable fluting .
  3. ^ Paul Laster: Picasso Nude Sells for Record Price. Flavorwire, May 5, 2010, accessed September 9, 2010.
  4. ^ For example, John Richardson: A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932. Knopf, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-307-26665-1 , page 456
  5. ↑ Excerpt shown in Paul Laster: Picasso Nude Sells for Record Price.
  6. ↑ Complete, but pale and small illustration of the photo in Tom Flynn: Annus mirabilis for bankers, annus horribilis for those who bailed them out. ( Memento of August 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) May 5, 2010, accessed September 9, 2010
  7. ↑ Tom Teodorczuk : Picasso's Pounds 70m nude busts world art record at auction. In: Evening Standard , London, May 5, 2010