just from the 13. December 1954 to 14. February 1955 Picasso’s cycle “Les femmes d’alger” was born. It is called five-ten images – ten very colorful paintings and five in grey as Grisaillen – in different size, from Picasso, with “A” to “O”. Now a picture has been auctioned off in an auction at Christie’s in New York from this series: the “F” Version of the “Les femmes d’alger”, painted on 17. January 1955. She was hitting for 25.5 million dollars to an unknown bidder, and he paid for it with the auction buyer’s premium, a total of 29.2 million dollars. The estimate was “in the range of” $ 25 million, which were guaranteed in the also anonymous seller in advance.
Rose-Maria Gropp
editor in the features section, responsible for the “art market”.
F. A. Z.
Perhaps a higher price was expected for this, because it is not a work of a quite Museum-quality since 1956 in the market. According to the provenance information in the auction catalog, this Version of “F” is part of the since 1957, the New York-based dealers Daniel and Eleanore Saidenberg, whose descendants sold it in her private collection and only in 2011 to the seller. But above all, it is only the second picture of the cycle that appeared since 1997, in an auction. And the other, first painting has an auction history wrote: Because on 11. May 2015 posted the final Version of the “O” from “Les femmes d’alger”, painted on 14. February 1955, $ 160 million, with buyer’s premium the was 179.4 million; the buyer is unknown until today.
This Version of “O” was blasted a good two years, the most expensive picture ever made in an auction (up to the Leonardo da Vinci attributed to “Salvator Mundi” in November of 2017, with 450 million dollars, all of the standards). The beautiful, large-format Version of the “O” was provided five years ago, with a previously never-mentioned expectation of $ 140 million, also covered with a warranty, probably about this height.
Picasso’s cycle – which was previously exhibited only Once in its entirety, 1955 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, is among several aspects of importance. It is his ultimate artistic engagement with Eugène Delacroix’s large-format “Les femmes d’alger” of 1834 in the Louvre. Delacroix was three women in a private Harem in Algiers, to which he has access. His painting is considered to be the primal scene of Orientalism, the to Henri Matisse, with its famous odalisques – and to Picasso. The was strongly moved by the death of his major competitors and friends; Matisse was at the 3. November 1954 died. Just a few weeks later, he began his work-group. Add to this the Picasso’s came private Situation: After Françoise Gilot had left him in 1953, with the common children, Claude and Paloma, lived together since the fall of 1954, with its more than 45 years later, a new companion, Jacqueline Roque; in the meantime, he was 73 years old.
the Picasso, a built Jacqueline Roque visible in the left foreground, as the woman with the bare Breasts in the versions “F” and especially “O”. She was so enthroned, so to speak, of him; he has incorporated his personal “Harem”. And you will be portrayed then so often of him, as none of its predecessors – not least because its Radius increasingly reduced. In addition, Les femmes d’alger Work “” in the series of “Art from Art”, in which the late Picasso appropriates artistic predecessors, such as Cranach, Dürer or Grünewald, to be alienated in his visual language.
