Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Tête de femme (Dora Maar)

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Tête de femme (Dora Maar)
signed 'Picasso' (on the reverse); dated '5.juin 41' (on the stretcher)
oil on canvas
16 1/4 x 13 1/8 in. (41 x 33.2 cm.)
Painted in Paris on 5 June 1941

Special Notice
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Provenance
Marie Cuttoli & Henri Laugier, by 1955 until at least 1966.
Galería Theo, Madrid (no. 378).
Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1996.

Pre-Lot Text
ABSTRACTION BEYOND BORDERS: WORKS FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION
From Paris to Munich, Berlin, Milan and Hanover, in the opening decades of the Twentieth Century, a number of artists created art that radically differed from those of their predecessors. Working across Europe, these pioneering provocateurs, radicals and trailblazers – Georges Braque, Francis Picabia, František Kupka, to name just a few – shunned the last vestiges of illusionism to instead create unprecedented works with no visible, recognisable or definable subject matter. Liberating colour, line and form from their centuries-old descriptive role, they overturned pictorial tradition, embarking on an abstract adventure that would come to define art of the Twentieth Century. Crossing geographical boundaries, encompassing a variety of media, and often blurring traditional distinctions of painting and sculpture, abstraction spread with an extraordinary speed, transforming artistic practice forever.
From the initial steps towards a new artistic language, to the paradigmatic embodiment of this concept, this diverse group of works embodies this varied, experimental and groundbreaking path of abstraction, demonstrating the variety of ways that artists across the globe embraced this radical practice. Braque’s cubist composition, Cartes et cornet à dés presents the origin of this move towards a new, non-representational artistic language. Along with Picasso – the pair, ‘like mountain-climbers roped together’, as Braque recalled of this frenzied period of seismic innovation – the artist undermined conventional notions of perspective, opening the door to a whole new way of depicting the world.
As rebellious as the cubists’ rejection of the centuries-old rules of representation, Picabia’s playful collage Sans titre (Pot de fleurs) uses the very materials of art making to parody the mimetic traditions of art, creating a semi-abstract play of colour and line. Far removed from any trace of the recognisable world, Kurt Schwitters’ rare Merz relief, Das Richard-Freitag-Bild dates from the height of his involvement with the International Constructivist movement. It was executed during a period when he was codifying Merz – the one-man art movement that he created in 1919 – into a utopian Constructivist language of form, taking the deconstruction of Dada and combining it with the aims of Constructivism. Following the same aesthetic, Georges Vantongerloo’s perfectly composed De Stijl composition embodies the tenets of geometric abstraction. In addition, Kupka, one of the leading pioneers of non-representational abstraction, is represented in this collection with a rare composition entitled Series C, III, Elevation, a work that marries his elegant abstract idiom with the deeper, spiritual dimension that was often the source of his abstractions.
By contrast, Magritte, an artist whose unique form of Surrealism serves as the very antithesis to the development of non-representational abstraction, is represented in this group with an important early painting, Les signes du soir. A pictorial trompe l’oeil riddle, with this painting Magritte confuses, undermines and questions the entire nature of representational painting, paving the way for the conceptual art that dominated artistic production of the post-war era.
From the purely formal – Schwitters and Vantongerloo – to the spiritual, mystic or surreal – Kupka, Jawlensky, Magritte and Picasso, this collection, assembled with the eye of an aesthete, encapsulates the multi-faceted nature and pioneering spirit of modernist abstraction throughout the Twentieth Century. Their curiosity, daring eclecticism and pioneering spirit of exploration nearly 100 years ago paved the way for artists and collectors today.

Literature
C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol. 11, Oeuvres de 1940 et 1941, Paris, 1960, no. 153, n.p. (illustrated pl. 65).

Exhibited
Paris, Galerie Max Kaganovitch, 1951.
Paris, Galerie Max Kaganovitch, Dessins, Aquarelles, Tableaux, Sculptures des XIX et XX siècles, May - June 1966, no. 77, n.p.
Paris, Grand Palais, Hommage à Pablo Picasso, November 1966 - February 1967, no. 193 (illustrated n.p.)
Cologne, Galerie Gmurzynska, Pablo Picasso: Don Hilario Cuernajón, April - July 1996, pp. 38-39 (illustrated p. 37 & illustrated in situ, n.p.).
Basel, Kunstmuseum Basel, Die Picassos sind da! Eine Retrospecktive aus Basler Sammlungen, March - July 2013, no. 71, p. 154 (illustrated p. 150).