The painting, included in the rating of the most expensive works of the great Picasso, is dedicated to one of the most powerful heartfelt affections of the artist – Marcel Humbert, or better known as Eva Guell.
Their love story is beautiful and tragic. The master idolized his muse, making confessions not only through his paintings, but also directly on them. So, in the pictures “Guitar” and “Violin”, written in 1912, one can clearly see the inscriptions, as if accidentally inscribed in the plots – “I love Eve.” The love story did not last long, soon Eve became sick and began to fade before her eyes. When Picasso was finally able to attach her to the hospital, she weighed only 24 kg. After a while, she was gone, and the inconsolable artist began to live for a while as a reclusive woman, mourning her loss.
Many books will tell you that not a single portrait or photo of this fatal beauty has been preserved. However, this is not the case. As for the portraits, indeed in the paintings written in the style of cubism, such as “Woman in a chemise”, there is no need to speak about portrait similarity, but still a couple of photographs of Eva are preserved in the archive of Picasso’s friend Gertrude Stein.
The presented work is simple in plot, but complex in content. Only a chair and a fragment of a shirt have real outlines here. As for the heroine herself, we can only guess the voluminous parts of her body – the chest, flowing hair, long eyelashes and even a bare belly with a navel. Art critics notice that it was with this work that the artist anticipated the whole multifaceted trend – surrealism.
The work contains a pronounced sculptural style – so tangible volume and shape, combined with the technique of collage. Grotesque combinations, broken proportions, an unthinkable form of transmission – this work can be understood only by completely abandoning coherent logic, relying only on fantasy.
Color is solved in warm colors – brown, beige, pink. The colors sound in unison, without interfering with the perception of a slim cubic design.
The picture flashed in 1997 at Christie’s auction code, and was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it is today.
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