Pablo Picasso and the line – the graphic mastery of an artistic genius
Calling Picasso an artistic genius is by no means an exaggeration. His mastery of line and color and infinite inventiveness never fails to astonish us. These qualities characterized Picasso's exuberant creative output until he died in 1973. Hardly any other artist of the 20th century can match Picasso's enduring artistic progressiveness, his work shaping many art historical trends well into his old age. Picasso was obsessed, constantly seeking new forms of creative expression, tirelessly exploring and refining his style, motifs, and technical skills. Unlike his paintings, however, Picasso's works on paper captivate viewers with the unique immediacy of expression through which the artist rendered ideas that had just sprung from his creative mind onto paper. Free and spontaneous, these works are fascinating in how ideas that solely exist as mental images are brought to life with confident strokes.



“Le Sculpteur et son Modèle” – Artist and model: a key theme in Picasso's oeuvre
The gouache “Le Sculpteur et son Modèle” is particularly remarkable for its high technical quality and outstanding draftsmanship. Colorful, painterly, and executed in a large format, this work, created in Cannes on the Côte d'Azur in the summer of 1933, is directly related to the gouache “Le Sculpteur et la Statue” (Zervos XIII, 120, formerly also Paul Rosenberg, Paris, now in the Berggruen Collection, Berlin), from 1932. The artist explores the motif of artist and model, which is significant in art history in general and for Picasso in particular, in both drawings. This motif became one of his most important themes over the decades until his death. In the early 1930s, Picasso acquired the famous Château de Boisgeloup in Normandy as an artistic retreat, where he worked inspired and captivated by the striking beauty of his young muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, creating various versions of his famous sculpture “Bust of a Woman (Marie Thérèse).” This artistic encounter and intense visual exploration of his model and lover on the Côte d'Azur in the summer of 1933 must have inspired Picasso to depict this intimate creative moment in a scene showing the sculptor and his model. Although Picasso was blessed with a talent for drawing that made even his depictions of goats and cats famous, his long and intense exploration of the female body revealed his exceptional talent as a draftsman. Using a reverse drawing technique, the artist's incarnate and the sculpture he created remain in the paper's tone, standing out against his nude model draped in a soft blue.



Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter – “Le Sculpteur et son Modèle” as an intimate testimony to a passionate love affair
Inspired by the famous Pygmalion scene from ancient mythology and a topic in art history since the Renaissance, Picasso created a classic yet highly personal motif in “Le Sculpteur et son Modèle.” Just as the ancient sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with his statue of Aphrodite that comes to life before his eyes, blurring the lines between art and reality, Picasso—who was still married to his first wife Olga at the time—fell in love with his young model Marie-Thérèse, whom he had met in Paris in 1927 when she was just 17 years old.


Until the mid-1930s, Picasso was able to keep his affair with his new muse a secret from his wife. However, Picasso attributed the distinct facial features of his new love to the female nude in “Le Sculpteur et son modèle.” Artist and model, naked and close, admire the sculpture as their joint work. Moreover, Picasso merges the artist not only with his person but also with the representation of the faun as Picasso's alter ego, as he had already done in the sheets of his famous graphic series “Suite Vollard,” published in 1937. The erotic component of the ancient theme is emphasized and emotionally charged to reflect the artist's situation.



Looking out over the deep blue sea, Picasso painted his turbulent feelings, stirred by his love for the young Marie-Thérèse, with ravishing perfection on the Côte d'Azur on July 19, 1933. As a diary entry turned into a picture, “Le Sculpteur et son Modèle” is not only an outstanding example of Picasso's unrivaled draftsmanship but also a compelling intimate testimony to Picasso's deep love for Marie-Thérèse Walter, who, alongside his later muse Dora Maar, inspired the artistic genius to some of art history's most significant works. The portrait of Marie-Thérèse, “Femme à la montre” (1932), which was auctioned in New York in 2023, is the second most expensive Picasso ever sold at auction. [JS]

“Mon cher Rosi – Mon cher Pic": an artist and his dealer
With the opening of his gallery at 21 rue La Boétie in 1910, Paul Rosenberg (1881–1959) established one of the most prominent establishments in the Paris art world. Rosenberg's program included both Picasso and avant-garde luminaries, including Georges Braque, Marie Laurencin, Fernand Léger, and Henri Matisse. With an early focus on French Impressionism, particularly artists such as Renoir, Monet, and Degas, Rosenberg would play a key role in Picasso's rise to the foremost exponent of modern art between 1918 and 1939. The artist and his art dealer were connected by more than just a business arrangement – their collaboration was characterized by mutual trust, aesthetic harmony, and deep personal friendship. Rosenberg represented Picasso through exhibitions and provided him with a studio in the neighboring 23 rue La Boétie. A particular highlight of his promotion of Picasso was the retrospective “Picasso: Forty Years of His Art” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1939/40), which he co-initiated and made possible by his close connection to the director Alfred H. Barr. Among other works, the counterpart to the gouache presented here, now in the Berggruen Collection, was on display there.


Theft, rescue from a rolling train, and restitution
The occupation of France marked the beginning of a dark chapter for Rosenberg. Immediately after the German invasion in May/June 1940, widespread looting began, with renowned art dealers and collectors among the first victims. Paul Rosenberg was also targeted by the Nazi looting organization “Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce,” established solely for this purpose and headed by Alfred Rosenberg. In July 1940, his Paris gallery was expropriated, and in September, his inventory, which had been secured in Floirac near Bordeaux, fell victim to confiscation. More than 200 works by important artists—including Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Cézanne, Sisley, and Van Gogh—were confiscated and gradually transferred to the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris, which had been converted into a looting depot. Rosenberg and his family escaped the occupying forces by fleeing to New York via Portugal; a year later, he founded the Paul Rosenberg & Co. Gallery at 16 East 57th Street.
Meanwhile, the occupying forces used many of the looted works as commodities to obtain high-quality Old Master paintings. The Germans used a network of collaborating art dealers such as Raphael Gérard, who had been Rosenberg's neighbor in the Rue La Boétie in his early days. As defeat loomed, the Germans attempted to remove the remaining artworks from the country and, in August 1944, loaded 148 crates containing around 1,000 artworks onto a freight train bound for the Nikolsburg camp (now Mikulov, Czech Republic). However, informed by art historian Rose Valland, a troop commando unit, in collaboration with the Resistance – in which Rosenberg's son Alexandre is said to have been involved – managed to divert the train and finally stop it in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north of Paris. The works left behind on the train were among the first to be restituted by the Commission de récupération artistique, established in 1944, including the present gouache. Paul Rosenberg himself returned to Paris immediately after the liberation. He set out, among other places, to Switzerland in search of the remaining stolen artworks, some of which remain missing. [KT]