Sale: 560 / Evening Sale, Dec. 06. 2024 in Munich Lot 16


16
Pablo Picasso
Nu couché, 1970.
Colored chalk drawing
Estimate:
€ 200,000 - 300,000

 
$ 220,000 - 330,000

+
Nu couché. 1970.
Colored chalk drawing.
Signed and dated "25.7.70" in the upper left. On wove paper. 46 x 61.2 cm (18.1 x 24 in), the full sheet.
[KT].

• Iconic motif: the reclining female nude, one of the central themes in Picasso's oeuvre, is deconstructed to the extreme.
• Large and gaudy drawing created in Mougins in the summer of 1970, boasting vivid lines and maritime and erotic connotations.
• Picasso's inexhaustible creativity was honored in the 1971 retrospective at the Grande Galerie des Musée du Louvre - a rare tribute during his lifetime.
• On the 50th anniversary of his death in 2023, Picasso was honored with exhibitions worldwide , demonstrating the undiminished epoch-defining significance of the constantly reinventing artist
.

PROVENANCE: Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris.
Galerie Boulakia, Paris.
Gunnar Sandhal Anderson, Amsterdam.
Galerie Moderne, Silkeborg.
Private collection, Italy.
From a Swiss collection.

EXHIBITION: Fixsterne - 100 Jahre Kunst auf Papier. Adolph Menzel bis Kiki Smith, Schleswig Holzinisches Landesmuseen, Schloss Gottorf, May 31 - September 20, 2009, p. 131 ( full-page illu. in color).
Wunder auf Papier. Über 100 Jahre Zeichenkunst, Kunsthaus Villa Jauss, Oberstdorf, July 23 - October 3, 2010, no p. ( illustrated).
PAINTING still ALIVE.. On the way to modernity, Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, Torun, Poland, November 11, 2018 - January 13, 2019 ( illustrated on p. 177).

LITERATURE: Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso. Œuvres de 1970, Catalogue raisonné, vol. 32, Paris 1977, p. 76, cat. rais. no. 241 (illustrated).
- -
Alan Wofsy, The Picasso Project. Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. A comprehensive illustrated catalogue 1885-1973, The Final Years 1970-1973, San Francisco 2004, p. 79, cat. no. 70-2075 (illustrated).

"As a child, I drew like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like a child.“
”There is an artist in every child. The problem is to remain an artist when growing up."

Pablo Picasso, Propos sur l'art, Paris 1998

Called up: December 6, 2024 - ca. 17.30 h +/- 20 min.

Pablo Picasso demonstrated an unwavering and perpetually renewing creativity throughout his life. In the summer months, he would retreat to Mougins on the French Riviera, creating a fascinating drawing encompassing his entire oeuvre's essential themes and stylistic innovations. He used colored chalk to create a womanly figure in strong, confident strokes and achieved tremendous conciseness and expressiveness through this reduction to linear forms. All this reveals Picasso's extraordinary graphic gift and a profound exploration of the human figure he pursued throughout his life. For Picasso, the female body in particular – a characteristic expressive deconstruction in the present work – is not just a motif with a long tradition in art history. However, it is a central theme and creative driving force behind his constant examination of form, eroticism, and existence. This sheet from his late creative period is a particularly brilliant example of Picasso's draftsmanship. The loose, continuous stroke is a testament to his impressive spontaneity and confident movement, with which he captured the sensual sensations of the moment. In a deconstructive and synthetic process, Picasso assembled the body from its essential features: face, eyes, orifices, breasts, and curves, imbued with an inner dynamism, combined to create a harmonious and closed form. At the same time, the soft, rippling lines, interspersed with small organic forms framed by short lines, allow for associations with marine flora and fauna. The lightness of the bright colors gives the impression that the drawing, dated July 25, 1970, has absorbed the warmth and light of that day in the artist's life.

In Picasso's oeuvre, the female nude occupies a unique position. His muses, most of whom were also his life partners, had a crucial influence on his artistic production and repeatedly initiated new paths. They are models and sources of inspiration, appearing in his works as symbols of the creative process. One of his most important groups of motifs, in which, not least, his relationship with the young Marie-Thérèse ultimately triggered an intensive examination of the body, is the bathers, with which the subject found its way into his work in Dinard, Brittany, in the 1920s. Initially, he approached the human body in a sculptural and surrealistic way and continued his exploration of its endless facets in his paintings and drawings. The intimacy and closeness to his models allowed him freedom, evident in his liberated depictions. In 1961, he married his last partner, Jacqueline Roque, and moved into the Villa Mas Notre-Dame de Vie in Mougins near Cannes. In this drawing, Picasso crystallizes the essence of a summer with unadulterated ease, erotic fascination, and a lustful, graphic appropriation of a carefree and liberated physicality. [KT]




Buyer's premium, taxation and resale right compensation for Pablo Picasso "Nu couché"
This lot can be subjected to differential taxation plus a 7% import tax levy (saving approx. 5 % compared to regular taxation) or regular taxation, artist‘s resale right compensation is due.

Differential taxation:
Hammer price up to 800,000 €: herefrom 32 % premium.
The share of the hammer price exceeding 800,000 € is subject to a premium of 27 % and is added to the premium of the share of the hammer price up to 800,000 €.
The share of the hammer price exceeding 4,000,000 € is subject to a premium of 22 % and is added to the premium of the share of the hammer price up to 4,000,000 €.
The buyer's premium contains VAT, however, it is not shown.

Regular taxation:
Hammer price up to 800,000 €: herefrom 27 % premium.
The share of the hammer price exceeding 800,000 € is subject to a premium of 21% and is added to the premium of the share of the hammer price up to 800,000 €.
The share of the hammer price exceeding 4,000,000 € is subject to a premium of 15% and is added to the premium of the share of the hammer price up to 4,000,000 €.
The statutory VAT of currently 19 % is levied to the sum of hammer price and premium. As an exception, the reduced VAT of 7 % is added for printed books.

We kindly ask you to notify us before invoicing if you wish to be subject to regular taxation.

Calculation of artist‘s resale right compensation:
For works by living artists, or by artists who died less than 70 years ago, a artist‘s resale right compensation is levied in accordance with Section 26 UrhG:
4 % of hammer price from 400.00 euros up to 50,000 euros,
another 3 % of the hammer price from 50,000.01 to 200,000 euros,
another 1 % for the part of the sales proceeds from 200,000.01 to 350,000 euros,
another 0.5 % for the part of the sale proceeds from 350,000.01 to 500,000 euros and
another 0.25 % of the hammer price over 500,000 euros.
The maximum total of the resale right fee is EUR 12,500.

The artist‘s resale right compensation is VAT-exempt.