On view

Standing Woman

Vallauris, Autumn 1947

Fired clay painted with slip, partially glazed

Height: 18.5 cm

Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso

Between 1945 and 1947 Pablo Picasso modelled more than twenty figurines of standing women. Besides the usual interpretation that relates these works to Greek Tanagra figures and other pieces from ancient Eastern cultures, other studies link them to Iberian votive statuettes. Picasso specifically collected ninety five of these religious figurines representing men, women and animals. There is some agreement that Picasso’s ‘discovery’ of Iberian culture can be dated to 1906, after the artist visited the Iberian Cabinet in the Musée du Louvre.

‘Picasso preferred to frequent the rooms on the ground floor, wandering here and there like a hunting dog looking for game among the Egyptian and Phoenician antiquities, among the sphinxes, the basalt idols, the papyrus and the brightly painted sarcophagi’.

Ardengo Soffici. «Fatti personali». Gazzetta del Popolo, 19 February 1939, p. 3.

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‘In 1946, Picasso and Françoise Gilot visited the Madoura pottery at Vallauris, and so began Picasso’s intense affair with ceramics. He drew inspiration from the ancient Greek and Asian pottery exhibited at the Louvre […]’ [1].

‘This 1947 earthenware statue of standing woman with flowing hair and exaggerated breasts repeats features of a pencil sketch that Picasso executed in 1946 in Antibes. Despite her voluptuous form, the statue’s overall pose is stiff, defined by her legs and arms that press tightly against her body. In both drawing and sculture, the standing woman, with her long elegant neck, is slender and immobile. Only the round breasts and mass of falling hair soften her body’s rigid vertical line.

In earlier draings, such as those from February 1946 (Z.XIV.137-151), Picasso explored the female body in flowerlike constructions: the head and breasts were circles; the body, often comprised of straight or curved lines. The woman-flower, or femme-fleur, representations are often associated with his lover Françoise Gilot (born 1921). At this time, the particular use of circles as a simplified form for the female breast is also attributed to Françoise. […] In June 1946, circular breasts distinguish a series of crayon drawings of standing nudes.

Picasso used the forms of tanagras—ancient terracotta figures and vessels—as inspiration for ceramics, like the present example, that were produced at the Madoura factory in Vallauris in October 1947. Some of his interpretations include the spherical breasts similar to those in the present work. This figure of a standing woman belongs to 22 statues recorded by Werner Spies (Spies 303-316, 322-329) […]. According to Marilyn McCully, the earthenware and plaster models were made in 1947. Valsuani cast eleven bronzes of each figure, ten of which are numbered 1/10’ [2].

Tomado de:
[1] LEBRERO, José. Pablo Picasso. New Collection 2017-2020. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2017, p. 301.
[2] GIMÉNEZ, Carmen. Collection Museo Picasso Málaga. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2003, p. 341.

Autumn 1947