Provenance

Estate of the Artist

Marina Picasso, the artist’s granddaughter; acquired from the above.

Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired from the above in 2022.

Introduction

Pablo Picasso’s Jacqueline au Bandeau encapsulates the startling vitality of the artist’s late period, memorialising not only the expressive style which he pioneered; but also his reinvention of the possibilities of printmaking. Picasso commissioned this bronze relief in 1964, of an original linocut entitled Femme au Cheveux Flous, which he created two years prior, as a unique encapsulation of one of his most accomplished print series. Cherished first by Picasso and then his descendants for nearly sixty years, we are proud to present this distinctive work to the public for the first time.

Following his marriage to Jacqueline Roque in 1961, Picasso would embark upon a period of intense experimentation and production, which would characterise his final decade. In these years, the great artist focused his gaze upon subjects he considered to be pure archetypes; foremost amongst these were the face of his muse, Jacqueline.

Picasso always experienced bursts of creative energy when in love, and Jacqueline au Bandeau was conceived in 1962 only shortly after his marriage, one of a group of portraits testifying to his intensity of feeling. More than simple representations, Picasso composed his portraits of Jacqueline from memory, creating some of his most personal and subjective interpretations of the human character.

Yet beyond its striking visuals, Jacqueline au Bandeau stands as a near-unique material record of Picasso’s revolutionary impact on the print medium. In the early 1960s, Picasso would pioneer the reductive method of producing linocuts, greatly expanding the technical possibilities it afforded artists.

Aware of his achievement, Picasso chose to memorialise a small selection his best linocuts in bronze, transforming them into accomplished relief sculptures in their own right. Each line and groove of Jacqueline au Bandeau therefore represents a rare physical imprint of Picasso’s hand as he worked and reworked the printing block. A testament to both stylistic and technical innovation, Picasso’s bronze relief offers the viewer an outstanding opportunity to experience a direct material connection to his genius.

Jacqueline Roque

Picasso met Jacqueline Roque in 1952 in the south of France, where she was working as a salesperson for Picasso's great collaborators in the field of ceramics, the Ramiés. Jaqueline was one of several women competing for Picasso’s attention following his break-up with Françoise Gilot.

Jacqueline's unflappable support and willingness to sacrifice herself on the altar of his ego won the artist's heart and they quickly become lovers, remaining together for the rest of the Picasso’s life. After living together in the south of France in the early 1950s, a period in which she would inspire his Les Femmes d’Alger, the couple then moved back to Picasso’s studio in Paris. They married in 1961, before returning to Cannes, and settling there for the rest of the artist’s life. Jacqueline would henceforth populate Picasso's paintings, drawings and prints as the archetypal woman, nearly always nude.

Picasso's life has often been divided into periods according to the influence of his lovers, including Fernande, Marie-Thérèse, Dora and Françoise amongst others; Jacqueline was Picasso's last love, a fact that was reflected in the decision to marry her. Likewise, Jacqueline was one of the most important figures in his life, protecting the artist from the increasing demands that came at the cost of his incredible fame and reputation at the time. Picasso and Jaqueline lived a charmed life at Notre-Dame-de-Vie, the large villa by Mougins which would provide his home for the rest of his life.

Picasso had always experienced particular bursts of creativity during periods of his most intense love, and this bronze relief hails from the couple’s contented post-marital period in 1962 as they settled themselves in Southern France. Picasso and Jacqueline would move into a large house in the town of Mougins. So emphatically would Jacqueline make her imprint on the locale that she came to be referred to as the ‘Mistress of Mougins’, a characterisation only furthered by her presence across the walls of Picasso’s home. Hélène Parmelin, a diarist and close friend of the couple, would describe the effect of Picasso’s 1962 series as follows:

‘Picasso kept showing us serious faces with huge close-set eyes, sort of Mona Lisa’s with elongated hands… women engrossed beneath hats, or bareheaded with eyes with eyes and hair in every shape and position; one with a little head, full face and double profile, within her great sombre profile… They are the Dames de Mougins, the queens, the beloved ones, the Jacquelines, all watching us at once with an incomparable serenity’.

Picasso and his late style

While the late 1950s saw Picasso turning to the Old Masters and grappling with the visual legacy of Velazquez, Manet, and Delacroix, an undertaking encapsulated by his treatments of Las Meninas, Dejeuner sur l’Herbe and Les Femmes d’Alger, the early 1960s would see his art undergo a radical shift. Beginning with his marriage to Jacqueline and permanent settlement in Mougins in 1961, he would begin embarking on perhaps the most productive phase of his career, a remarkable feat given that he had just celebrated his eightieth birthday. In what Richardson would describe as ‘a phenomenal end to a phenomenal oeuvre’ Picasso would spend a decade radically experimenting with form and style.

Jacqueline au Bandeau was produced at the beginning of this final phase in Picasso’s career. Around 1962, Picasso decisively broke away from the art historical allusions and iconography of the preceding decade and turned towards the issue of pictorial form. Picasso instead chose to depict isolated figures and archetypes, always focusing his gaze upon the essentials of a narrow range of subjects: the model, the nude, the couple, and the costumed man.

In Jacqueline au Bandeau, Picasso has thus chosen to depict Jacqueline without any narrative context, keeping her as the singular object and focus of his attention. Picasso and his young wife would spend almost every day together in the closed and private confines of the studio; the artist producing numerous drawings and sketches of his young muse. Yet it is notable that despite Picasso’s numerous images of Jacqueline, he would never ask her to sit for him, instead preferring to capture her candid essence, with one of their close friends during this period noting that ‘Jacqueline once told [him] that she had not once posed for Picasso’. His portrayals of Jacqueline are thus more than simply representations of an artist’s model, they are composites built from Picasso’s subjective perception and memory of his partner: consequently, images like Jacqueline au Bandeau rank as some of the artist’s most personal interpretations of the human face. Picasso’s portraits from this period are therefore character studies as much as they are visual recordings.

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