PABLO PICASSO 1881-1973
Modèle nu et Sculptures, from: La Suite Vollard, 1933

etching on parchment, plate size: 38,0 x 29,6 cm

numbered 1/3 and signed Picasso in red ink

from the edition of 3

Catalogue raisonée
Bloch185; Geiser-Baer 344

PROVENANCE
Ambroise Vollard, 1865-1939;
his estate;
Henri Marie Petiet, 1894-1980;
sale Grisebach, Berlin, 7 June 1996, lot 470;
there acquired by a private collection, Berlin;
by descent;
from whom consigned to Auktionshaus Quentin, Berlin, 25 October 2025, lot 160.

Parchment was only rarely used as a printing support. It is considerably more expensive than paper and technically more difficult to print on. One of the few exceptions is Rembrandt, who experimented with it in the 1650s. Rembrandt was among the artists Picasso admired most, and he may well have been directly inspired by his seventeenth-century Dutch predecessor. Picasso used parchment as a printing support only once, for the deluxe edition of the Suite Vollard. Every sheet in that edition was individually numbered and signed by the artist in red ink. Opportunities to see one of the three known parchment impressions are exceptionally rare.

With just a few assured, economical lines, Picasso depicts a nude woman observing a life-size nude sculpture. Shown in profile and wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair, the woman gazes intently—perhaps even sorrowfully—at the face of the sculpture, while placing her left hand on its knee. Picasso has worked the sculpture more extensively, modelling its muscular body with dynamic lines. At first glance, its powerful physique suggests a male figure. Yet the long, wavy hair, and above all the form of the breast, indicate that it is more likely female. Even so, the figure retains a distinctly androgynous character. Between the two women stands a monumental classical sculpted head of a bearded man. Beyond it, the composition opens onto a strip of sky.

Can the subject perhaps be explained, at least in part, autobiographically? The sculpture’s striking classical profile closely recalls Picasso’s depictions of Marie-Thérèse Walter, with whom he maintained a secret relationship while married to Olga Khokhlova. The features of the nude woman bear a certain resemblance to those of Olga Khokhlova. Does she perhaps suspect that the sculpture shows not merely the artist's model but also his mistress? And might the classical head separating the two women be understood as a veiled self-portrait of Picasso himself?