Bather

`The limbs of the undulating bather in this late work Picasso are barely distinguishable from the foamy green sea surging around her. Swirling brushstrokes immerse her in the waves so that subject and environment are fused in absolute harmony. The woman depicted here is probably Jacqueline Roque (1927-1986), Picasso’s last wife. However, the painting’s composition recalls a work almost forty years earlier, the Swimmer of 1932 in which arabesques suggest the athletic body of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909-1977). The two paintings from markedly different periods bear strong similarities in general structure and orien-tation. The works also reveal Picasso’s tendency to combine the features of new and old lovers. This is particularly the case with Jacqueline who, in other interpretations, resembles Fernande Olivier (1881-1966), an important model during his Rose period. Both paintings share the sense of movement expressed in the extended arms and open hands of the free-spirited women (MP 78, Z.IV.380) made famous in Picasso’s curtain for the ballet Le Train bleu; and in both paintings, the bathers’ lack of volume derives from Picasso’s amoebalike acrobats and swimmers of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The present work has no apparent indication of depth, no reference point to distinguish foreground or background. Nonetheless, the forms themselves in their size and placement so powerfully convey a sense of mass that the viewer is tricked into seeing depth where there is none. This manipulation of space was at the core of Picasso’s early experiments with Cubism and is repeated here in the work of the aging artist, still investigating pictorial space.

This painting was first exhibited in Avignon at the Palais des Papes in 1973 and was last on public view in the 1994-1995 exhibition Picasso. Primera mirada. The work is a pendant to the painting of a male bather (Z.XXXIII.88) made on the same day, 5 July 1971 [1]. Both works appeared in the estate inventory. They treat subjects that Picasso rarely explored in painting after the late I920s and 1930’ [2].


[1] GIMÉNEZ, Carmen. 1994. Picasso. Primera Mirada. Cat, exp. (Malaga: Palacio Episcopal, 1994-1995; Sevila: Pabellon Mudejar, 1995; Nimes: Carré d´Art, Musée d´Art Contemporain, 1995). Sevilla: Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, p. 322.
[2] GIMÉNEZ, Carmen (ed). Collection Museo Picasso Málaga. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2003, pp. 166-167.