Three Nudes

‘For Picasso, the neoclassical work which he produced at the end of the 1910s and start of the 1920s did not represent a “return to order”, as has been endlessly stated, simply because his output had already included periods with ideas base don similar proposals. This drawing, probably created in May 1920, was produced in a very specific context, that of the artist’s new home as a married man on Rue La Boétie, where between May and June he made his celebrated series of portraits of musicians, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla, a metaphor of his new status. His drawings of this time make use of pencil as the primary technique, giving rise to a pure, synthetic line. In April we already find various drawings of naked women, some in pairs or even using the harem format, located in compositions that often include a chair. Of all of them, however, Three Nudes can be said to be the most interesting, as it offers a recreation of the ancient Greek myth of the Three Graces.

The point of contact with Rubens’s and Raphael’s classical representations of this theme in oil, to mention only the most important, does not only lie in the identical number of women or in the full nudity of the figures, but also in the degree of complicity evident between them, an aspect that Picasso echoes through his knowledge of this tradition. As in the classical depiction, the three women maintain physical contact between each other, creating a closed circle through their joined hands and their arms on each other’s shoulders, a circularity that is also present in their gazes. The element that marks a break with tradition is the chair, as these figures are normally depicted standing and in a dancing position. The chair and gathered-up hairstyles add the touch of modernity through which Picasso fused tradition with his own reality — a reality inhabited by Olga, the woman whom he had married the previous year and whom he had repeatedly portrayed using the same calligraphic drawing seen in the central women here. In some portraits of Olga, Picasso constructs the face through a fine, curved and incomplete line, lightly suggesting the nose and eyes in a remarkable display of economy of line. Explicit parallels between artistic tradition and Picasso’s personal situation would be constant throughout his career, allowing us to read his work in an a-temporal manner’.

Eduard Vallès in: LEBRERO, José. Pablo Picasso: New Collection 2017-2020. [Cat. exp. Museo Picasso Málaga, 2017]. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2017, pp. 174-175.