NEW YORK, NY.- 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 modle (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'poque Jacqueline."
Prior to the sale, the group are unveiled in Paris today as part of Sotheby's international exhibition tour. They will then be offered in Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction on 18 November, alongside a selection of exceptional works spanning the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, bringing this rare survey of Picasso's final decades to the market at a moment of renewed scholarly and collector interest in the artist's late achievement.
The Works
Pablo Picasso
Femme nue et homme au fanion
Executed on 29 July 1969
Estimate: $15–20 million
Conceived on an impressive scale, the painting unites two of Picasso's most important late motifs, the couple and the musketeer. In his final years the musketeer became a many-sided figure, a card player, musician and bon vivant; here he is one half of a pair of lovers, an allusion to Picasso's happiness with Jacqueline. A spear and pennant in the red and yellow of the Spanish flag, a heraldic device that also likely nods to the matador, ties the artist to his native Spain and stands out against the otherwise monochromatic ground. The formal arrangement of the pair recalls classical portraiture, placing Picasso in conversation with the Old Masters he so admired.
Pablo Picasso
Couple
Executed on 12 January 1970
Estimate: $10–15 million
One of Picasso's most tender interpretations of lovers, Couple serves as a profound culmination of a subject that preoccupied him from the end of 1969 into 1970. Though he makes no attempt at specific likeness, the female figure is understood to be Jacqueline Roque, and the male figure the artist himself. At once deeply personal and art historically resonant, the painting recalls celebrated depictions of artistic partnership, notably Rembrandt and Saskia, as Picasso casts himself and Jacqueline within a lineage of artist-muse pairings that stretches across centuries. The warm flesh tones and dreamy countenances lend the composition a striking tenderness, while its bold simplification of form demonstrates the freedom and confidence that defined Picasso's final years. First exhibited in the landmark 1970 exhibition Pablo Picasso at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, the work has remained out of public view ever since.
Pablo Picasso
Le Peintre et son modle
Executed between 12 and 14 November 1964
Estimate: $2.5–3.5 million
Of the many themes Picasso pursued, the painter and his model was among the most all-consuming. Present in his work as early as 1914, it became a singular fascination from the early 1960s. Throughout the history of art, the subject has served as a meditation on the creative act itself, and Picasso returned to it repeatedly in his later years as a means of examining the shifting relationship between artist, muse and image. Here a bearded painter stands at left with brush and easel, the nude model reclines at right, and the easel divides them, heightening the tension of what becomes a game of seduction. For Picasso, the true subject was always the act of painting itself.
Pablo Picasso
Nu
Executed between 1 and 3 May 1972
Estimate: $2.5–3.5 million
Executed in 1972, Nu reflects the confidence and formal freedom of Picasso's late style, a period in which the artist distilled decades of experimentation into works of remarkable immediacy and invention. The enigmatic nude was, like most of his late portraits, inspired by Jacqueline, whom he met in 1952 at the Vallauris pottery studio. The angular features and abstracted form recall the audacious figuration of his Surrealist years, while the delicacy of the medium lends the work an unexpected lyricism.
