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Lot Essay
Françoise Gilot recalled that "While Pablo was still working at the Musée d'Antibes [in 1946, the photographer Michel] Sima had come to us one day with a little owl he had found in a corner of the museum. One of his claws had been injured. We bandaged it and it gradually healed. We bought a cage for him and when we returned to Paris we brought him back with us and put him in the kitchen with the canaries, the pigeons and the turtledoves. He smelled awful and ate nothing but mice. Every time the owl snorted at Picasso he would shout, "Cochon, merde, and a few other obscenities, just to show the owl he was worse-mannered than he was" (in Life with Picasso, with C. Lake, New York, 1964, p. 144-145). The owl was sacred to Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom, and was the totemic bird of Antibes in antiquity. Picasso no doubt related to the stocky and clever predator. Moreover, his birds brought back childhood memories: Picasso's father kept and painted pigeons.
As a child of seven Picasso was fond of borrowing his Aunt Eloisa's scissors and cutting out little dolls, animals and flowers from paper to amuse his sister Lola and cousins Concha and Maria. In later years he made paper dolls for his own children. In the late 1940s and 1950s Picasso was a frequent visitor to Henri Matisse's studio and was fascinated with his friend's paper cut-outs. In 1954, the year of Matisse's death, Picasso made cut-outs from photographic paper in collaboration with André Villiers, which seem to have inspired him to create a new series of planar, instead of modeled, sculptures.
Picasso commenced his first group of sheet-metal sculptures later that year with a sequence of heads titled Sylvette (Spies, nos. 488-491), which portray a young woman he had been painting and drawing. He provided cardboard maquettes to workmen in a nearby Vallauris factory who turned the designs into metal sculptures, which the artist then embellished with drawing and color. He created a second group of heads (Spies, nos. 494-496) three years later. In November 1960, Picasso returned to the Vallauris factory, which had been taken over by Lionel Prejger and his business partners to make metal tubing. They agreed to collaborate on a large series of bent and folded metal sculptures, and in the course of the years 1961-1962 Picasso produced about 120 works, including this Chouette, most of which were carried out under Prejger's supervision.
Prejger visited Picasso almost daily to pick up the paper cut-outs which were to serve as models for his workmen, who produced an accurate copy in sheet metal in the desired thickness, which depended on the size of the sculpture. Picasso painted some of the sculptures--some quite elaborately, as seen here--while others were simply finished in a matte white. Sir Roland Penrose has observed that "The result combines the two-dimensional significance of drawing, the three-dimensional planes of the bent sheets, and the transparent space between the flat surfaces. With a delightful economy of means the simple sweeping curves of their outlines and the subtle play of light and shade on their surfaces combine to give them a sense of both movement and solidity. Whether they are birds, animals or human figures they all possess the tensions and movement existing in life" (in The Sculpture of Picasso, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1967, p. 32). Werner Spies has asserted that "These sheet metal sculptures are among the most magnificent in Picasso's late oeuvre" (op. cit., 2000, p. 296).
As a child of seven Picasso was fond of borrowing his Aunt Eloisa's scissors and cutting out little dolls, animals and flowers from paper to amuse his sister Lola and cousins Concha and Maria. In later years he made paper dolls for his own children. In the late 1940s and 1950s Picasso was a frequent visitor to Henri Matisse's studio and was fascinated with his friend's paper cut-outs. In 1954, the year of Matisse's death, Picasso made cut-outs from photographic paper in collaboration with André Villiers, which seem to have inspired him to create a new series of planar, instead of modeled, sculptures.
Picasso commenced his first group of sheet-metal sculptures later that year with a sequence of heads titled Sylvette (Spies, nos. 488-491), which portray a young woman he had been painting and drawing. He provided cardboard maquettes to workmen in a nearby Vallauris factory who turned the designs into metal sculptures, which the artist then embellished with drawing and color. He created a second group of heads (Spies, nos. 494-496) three years later. In November 1960, Picasso returned to the Vallauris factory, which had been taken over by Lionel Prejger and his business partners to make metal tubing. They agreed to collaborate on a large series of bent and folded metal sculptures, and in the course of the years 1961-1962 Picasso produced about 120 works, including this Chouette, most of which were carried out under Prejger's supervision.
Prejger visited Picasso almost daily to pick up the paper cut-outs which were to serve as models for his workmen, who produced an accurate copy in sheet metal in the desired thickness, which depended on the size of the sculpture. Picasso painted some of the sculptures--some quite elaborately, as seen here--while others were simply finished in a matte white. Sir Roland Penrose has observed that "The result combines the two-dimensional significance of drawing, the three-dimensional planes of the bent sheets, and the transparent space between the flat surfaces. With a delightful economy of means the simple sweeping curves of their outlines and the subtle play of light and shade on their surfaces combine to give them a sense of both movement and solidity. Whether they are birds, animals or human figures they all possess the tensions and movement existing in life" (in The Sculpture of Picasso, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1967, p. 32). Werner Spies has asserted that "These sheet metal sculptures are among the most magnificent in Picasso's late oeuvre" (op. cit., 2000, p. 296).