after Pablo Picasso – Tete de Roi (Le Carnaval de Nice)

Description

Edition:  Of unknown size

References:

Kay, Helen, 1965 “Picasso’s world of Children, New York, Doubleday & Co (188p)

Mallen, Enrique, ed. 1997-2021. Online Picasso Project. Sam Houston State University. (51:041)

Gerard Gosselin: “Picasso & La Presse – Un peintre dans l’histoire” Pages 122/123

Orozco No 78 (Illustrated) – page 60

Printed by: Imprimerie de la Victoire, Nice,

Published by:  JMP, de la Victoire

In the book “Picasso et la Presse George Tabaraud describes this work as being the first page Picasso designed for “Le Patriote” magazine, on the 31st January 1951,  and goes on to acknowledge the political activities of the artist. The work depicts the “Carnival King” and was made for the annual Nice Carnival. It reproduces in lithography the first cover of the page for “Le Patriot” newspaper Picasso made in 1951. Le Patriote was a newspaper of the National Front of Resistance during the Second World War. It later became an organ of the Communist Party section in the Alpes-Maritimes. Very quickly, the newspaper created a link with the artists of the region. Picasso’s support of the Nice newspaper has an explanation: it constituted, especially through its director Georges Tabaraud, his main contact with the PCF bases during his long residence on the Cote d’Azur.

John Richardson wrote as his Magnus Opus a multi volume definitive biography of Pablo Picasso. He also was the author of “The Sorcerers Apprentice” A book about “Picasso, Provence and Douglas Cooper”.  The front cover of this book depicts this lithograph which, it is believed, was a satirical portrait of Cooper : a fiendish, colourful, Evelyn Waugh-like figure who single-handedly assembled the world’s most important private collection of Cubist paintings. John Richardson tells the story of their ill-fated but comical association, which began in London in 1949 and moved on to the Chateau de Castille, a colonnaded folly in Provence filled with masterpieces by Picasso, Braque, Leger and Juna Gris. Richardson unfurls an adventure lasting twelve years, encompassing artists and writers, collectors and the famous – Francis Bacon, Jean Cocteau, Dora Maar, Peggy Guggenheim and Anthony Blunt to name but a few. Central to the book is Richardson’s close friendship with Picasso, which coincided with the emergence of the artist’s new mistress, Jacqueline Roque, and which gave Richardson an inside view of the repercussions she would have on Picasso’s life and work.

This work is described as “After Pablo Picasso”. It is part of a large series of works all of which are catalogued by Miguel Orozco in a pdf file which we can supply. It is the custom of the industry to allocate works whose printing plate was made by the artist as “Original Prints”. In the case of this work it is an Offset Lithograph Photographically reproduced and therefore not an original print. It is however signed by Picasso as part of a limited number. It is fully described in Orozco’s work.

21/9/2016 A similar piece in Christies, New York “The Private Collection of President & Mrs Ronald Reagan”

Condition: Some minor creasing and  toning but generally in good condition with fresh bright colours.