?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 80,000 - $ 120,000
PABLO PICASSO La Femme à la Résille (Femme aux Cheveux verts).
Color lithograph, 1949. 663x502 mm; 26 1/8x19 3/4 inches, full margins. Thirteenth state (of 13). An artist's proof in this state, aside from the edition of 50. Signed in red crayon, lower right. Printed by Mourlot, Paris. A superb impression with strong colors.
The impetus for this portrait of Françoise Gilot (born 1921), Picasso's lover and muse from 1944 to 1953, came about during a visit with Picasso to Matisse's studio in February 1946. When Matisse saw Gilot then for the first time, he stated that if he ever made a portrait of Gilot, he would paint her hair green. Three years later, recalling these words and in hommage to Matisse, Picasso created this lithograph through more than a dozen states and over a period of 3 months from March to May, 1949, with Gilot's hair green.
Similar proofs have sold at Kornfeld, Bern, 1992, lot 106; and Sotheby's, New York, November 1998, lot 446. Bloch 612; Mourlot 178 ter; Reuße 501.
