JEAN COCTEAU, (1889-1963)

Etude pour un portrait de Picasso

Etude pour un portrait de Picasso
pencil on paper
10 7/8 x 8 1/8 in (27.6 x 20.6 cm)
Executed in Rome on April 8, 1917

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Annie Guédras.

Provenance
The artist's estate, Milly-la-Forêt.
Édouard Dermit Collection, Paris (legatee of the artist; by descent from the above).
Acquired from the above circa 1990 - 1991.

"We are [Picasso, Sergej Diagilev and Massine] once again in Rome after a trip to Naples, and from there to Pompeii by car. I do believe that no city in all the world could please me more than Naples. The teeming classical antiquity, brand new, in this Arab Montmartre, in this great mess of a kermesse that never stops. Food, God and fornication, here are the drives of this novel people. Vesuvius crafts all the clouds of the world. The sea is dark blue. Hyacinths hurl themselves on the pavements."
- Jean Cocteau quoted in P. Caizergues & P. Chanel (eds.), Lettres à sa mère, vol. I., 1898-1918, Paris, 1989.

So wrote French poet and dramatist Jean Cocteau to his mother on March 13th, 1917. The 'we' of the letter referred to his friends Pablo Picasso, Sergei Diaghilev and Léonide Massine, with whom Cocteau embarked on a two-month Italian tour during the conception of the avant-garde ballet Parade. The quartet delved into the life of classical antiquity, visiting Rome, Naples and Pompeii, Cocteau documenting their travels in archival photographs, including a pipe-smoking Picasso and a quiet, smiling Massine, sitting amidst the ruins of Pompeii, as well as the present drawing which was executed in April while Cocteau and Picasso were in Rome. Cocteau made a series of Picasso sketches while the Cubist artist lounged around the excavated city, finding it amusing that Picasso refused to have his hair cut on the trip. In the present lot, Picasso is presented with a thick volume of hair, smoking a pipe.

With music by Erik Satie, choreography by Massine, and costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso, Parade was created by Cocteau for Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. The artistic collaboration premiered on Friday, May 18, 1917 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. When he wrote the program note in 1917, poet Guillaume Apollinaire described Parade as "a kind of surrealism" (une sorte de surréalisme), thus coining the word three years before the art movement would emerge in Paris.