?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 80,000 - $ 120,000
PABLO PICASSO Tête de femme, de profil.
Drypoint on cream wove paper, 1905. 293x250 mm; 11 5/8x9 7/8 inches, full margins. One of only a few early artist's proofs, before steel-facing of the plate, aside from the edition of 28 on Japan paper and the regular edition of 250 on Van Gelder wove paper. Signed in ink, lower right. From Saltimbanques. A brilliant, richly-inked impression of this extremely scarce, early print, with warm plate tone, selective wiping and velvety, inky burr.
Coinciding with his Rose Period (or Circus Period) of painting, Picasso's first series of etchings in 1905, generally known as La Suite des Saltimbanques, and created at the outset of his career at only 24 years old, are mostly candid representations of the lives and private moments of acrobats and gypsies. Picasso frequently attended the Cirque Médrano in Montmartre, Paris, where he associated with circus folk who, like himself, had chosen to follow a bohemian lifestyle, preferring a life on the fringes of society to one of a young bourgeois professional, Picasso's artworks exuded a fresh, avant-garde quality that dazzled and impressed contemporary art collectors.
During his first years in Paris, Picasso printed only a handful of proofs of the Saltimbanques plates, which were put aside and then, in 1913, steel-faced by the printer Louis Fort and published by Vollard in the editions of 28 (Japan paper) and 250 (Van Gelder paper). Early proof impressions such as the current work, typically signed by the artist, are exceedingly scarce. Bloch 6; Geiser 7.
