Pablo Picasso – Mousquetaire et nu assis (1967) UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £13,733,750
Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece Mousquetaire et nu assis (1967) will be a highlight of Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale in London on February 27. Estimate:d at £12-18 million it will be part of ‘20th Century at Christie’s’, series of sales from February 20 to March 67. 2018. This is among the first of the triumphant musketeers that appeared in Pablo Picasso’s art in 1967. The iconic figure is accompanied by a sensuous, seated nude.
She is Jacqueline, the artist’s final, great love, muse and wife, whose presence permeated every female figure in this final chapter of Picasso’s life. With one eye towards the Old Masters and another towards contemporary art Picasso shows himself still challenging the history of art, carrying out iconoclastic attacks, plundering the past and doing so in a strikingly fresh, gestural way.
Keith Gill, head of sale, said: “Picasso’s late career was defined by sensuous paintings in which he cast himself as the virile artist alongside his voluptuous lover. The allegorical figures were used by Picasso not only to reference fictitious characters but were a means by which he could situate himself firmly within the art historical canon alongside the likes of Rembrandt, El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. He seemed to have a sense of urgency to his work in this period, as if trying to beat the passage of time, a feeling that is evidenced by the dense brushwork and bold gestures of ‘Mousquetaire et nu assis’. It is a privilege to present the painting as a leading highlight in the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale.”
