Marie-Thérèse is the “sleeping woman” in much of Picasso’s art. In this piece, Picasso has maintained the exaggerated roundness of one of his Boisgeloup sculptures through the interplay of curving lines. The limited palette of greens, greys and browns are doubtless a sign of the artist’s distress at this time, the “worst period” of his life, as he would later write. Wounded by Olga who was refusing to grant him a divorce, Picasso left Boisgeloup in the autumn of 1936. He spent March and April of that year in secret with Marie-Thérèse and their daughter at a villa in Juans-les-Pins. For a time he expressed the desire to “give up on painting, sculpture, engraving, [and] poetry”, but by the summer of 1936 Picasso had entered a period of renewed creativity inspired by the horror of the Spanish Civil War and his latest muse, Dora Maar.

© Succession Picasso  2017
Localisation : Paris, musée Picasso
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée Picasso de Paris) / Jean-Gilles Berizzi