Picasso’s Hidden Late Masterpieces Head to Sotheby’s with $42 Million Estimate
Sotheby's will present Picasso's Heroic Years: Masterpieces from a Prestigious European Family, a group of four works from the final chapter of one of the most inventive careers in the history of art, in the Modern Evening Auction during The New York Sales this November.
The group is led by the monumental Femme nue et homme au fanion (1969, estimate $15 – 20 million), alongside Couple (1970), Le Peintre et son modèle (1964) and Nu (1972), together carrying a combined estimate of $30 – 42 million. Notably, the two principal paintings, Femme nue et homme au fanion and Couple, have remained out of public view since their exhibition in Pablo Picasso, 1969-1970 at the Palais des Papes in Avignon in 1970. Organized by Christian and Yvonne Zervos, the celebrated exhibition assembled more than one hundred recent works and served as a landmark affirmation of Picasso's late achievement.
Characterized by raw energy, gestural brushwork and a return to archetypal subjects, the paintings of Picasso's final two decades, the period known as his "Heroic Years," have undergone a significant critical reappraisal, now widely seen as the artist’s final flourish. As the scholar Simonetta Fraquelli has written, the re-evaluation since his death "has highlighted its undiminished power and originality," and the emotional depth and painterly freedom of these canvases would go on to exert a lasting influence on neo-expressionist painting from the early 1980s onward.
These works reflect both a growing awareness of mortality, as the artist sought to ward off death through a final burst of creativity, and a conscious decision to allow himself total liberty with style and subject. Having moved through so many phases of experimentation, he pared his language down, isolating the elements that fascinated him and rendering them in quick, spontaneous strokes, often on a grand scale and with a wit entirely his own. The recurring cast of characters found in the late work, the lovers, the musketeer, the painter and his model, can be read as a psychological projection of a complex and multifaceted identity, while his continuing dialogue with the Old Masters placed him firmly in the company of the canonical greats he admired. Many of these works were inspired by his last wife, Jacqueline Roque, whose presence defines the years often called "l'époque Jacqueline."
Main Image: Pablo Picasso, Femme nue et homme au fanion Executed on 29 July 1969 Estimate: $15 – 20 million Courtesy Sotheby's