Blue period Picasso—with a little secret—goes under the hammer (theguardian.com).
“One of only a handful of blue period Picassos still in private hands will come to the market with a never publicly seen secret on the reverse of its canvas.
Picasso’s La Gommeuse, an erotically charged 1901 painting of a cabaret performer, is remarkable in its own right and will create waves at the top end of the global art auction market.
But the crazy, bawdy painting on the back is perhaps just as jaw dropping. It is a painting of Picasso’s friend and flatmate Pere Mañach naked apart from a red and yellow striped turban on his head, in a sexual pose, urinating into an imaginary landscape.”
The paint sketch on the reverse, only discovered in 2000, was probably just that, a doodle while he and Mañach “immersed themselves in the debauched pleasures of the Parisian demi-monde” which he later flipped over to do a proper painting as canvas wasn’t cheap and paintings in his sombre blue period—prompted by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas— didn’t sell so well. So there you go; a doodle but I’m sure much interpretation will be floated down Mañach’s metaphorical stream none the less, certainly as much as is usually ignored when an illustration is removed from and taken out of its context as some on social media are obliged to do.
Recent/related stories
- Picasso portrait of mistress sold for £28m (approx. $44m) at Sotheby’s (Pick of the Week 12th February 2013)
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