Museum Berggruen: Picasso & Les Femmes d’Alger Wall texts Ground floor: Entrance: Les Femmes d’Alger, or Women of Algiers in English, is the title of 15 paintings that Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) painted in the winter of 1954–55. The series, which marks the start of his late work, not only occupies a central place in Picasso’s oeuvre but is also notable in the context of the 1950s. While the new generation of artists in Europe and North America was painting predominantly abstractly and avoided depicting figures and objects in their works, Picasso stuck to representational subjects and painted one of the most classic motifs of the history of Western art: female nudes, which Picasso of course rendered using his own stylized formal vocabulary. He experimented with human anatomy, stretching it beyond naturalistic limits, and grappled with issues in painting that he had not yet solved to his satisfaction in the course of a painting career already over 60 years long. As revealing as it would thus be to see all paintings from the series, labelled “A” to “O,” and the more than 100 preliminary drawings and prints together, the opportunity to do so rarely arises since they have been scattered to every corner of the earth. The Museum Berggruen is the only public collection in Europe that features one of the oil paintings from the series, namely, version L. With the overview, the museum invites you to trace the development of the series step by step – as if you were watching the artist at work. Femmes d’Alger was not the brainchild of Picasso but of Eugène Delacroix, who committed the subject to canvas in the nineteenth century in not just one but two world-famous paintings. Other artists before and after Picasso have also taken on this motif. On the first floor, we present the works that served as models and inspiration for Picasso’s series; on the second, a significant part of the series; and, on the third floor, the history of its reception as well as works by contemporary artists. Almost 200 years old, Femmes d’Alger accompanied larger historical processes that we can now consider in retrospect. The result is that our view of these works is shaped by our understanding of history – in this case, Algeria’s colonial history, but also the evolution of gender relations in art and society in general. The exhibition examines these issues through the works on display and its texts. Our aim is to invite our public on an exciting journey as they walk through the museum and to encourage many different possible interpretations, casting the artworks in an even richer and more complex light. We would like to give special thanks to the Berggruen family, without whose unfailing support and financial assistance this exhibition would not have been possible. We also warmly thank all our lenders, in particular the Musée national Picasso-Paris. Delacroix: In June 1832, Eugène Delacroix visited Algiers on his way back to France from a trip to Morocco. The city had come under French rule in 1830, and a colonial official introduced him to a local dignitary, who invited him to his home. What made the most lasting impression on the painter were the women he witnessed in their rooms, not least because he was aware that strangers were normally prohibited from seeing this. He drew the women in his sketchbook and wrote down their names (right wall). He later painted two versions, which he presented at the 1834 and 1849 exhibitions at the Paris Salon; the later version is on view in this room. The motif quickly became famous, propelled by a strong interest among European audiences in glimpses of distant worlds and especially orientalist subjects, that is, depictions – often freely invented or exaggerated for sensational effect – of scenes in predominantly Muslim countries. Henri Fantin-Latour, an admirer of Delacroix, made a smaller copy of the 1834 Louvre version (the one Picasso studied intensively) after the latters death. It is presented here to show the compositional differences between Delacroix’s two versions – in particular the shifting of the women to the middle ground of the image. This copy is one of the first in a long line of artworks that engage in dialogue with Delacroix. While Delacroix had tried out different arrangements of the figures in his two versions, Picasso would completely reshuffle them in his 15 paintings. His interest in the motif can be traced to as early as 1940, almost 15 years before he painted his series. He sketched all the figures in Delacroix’s painting on separate pages, still concerned at that point with faithfully reproducing the originals. 1954 In late 1954, a confluence of several events led Picasso to follow up his 1940 sketches based on Femmes d’Alger with his own oil paintings: • His encounter with Jacqueline Roque, his future second wife, who visually bears a strong resemblance to the Algerian woman depicted in profile by Delacroix in 1834. She is usually recognizable by her distinctive long neck. In one of his first studies dated 21 December 1954, Picasso places her on the right together with the Femmes d’Alger. • The death of Picasso’s longtime friend and artistic rival Henri Matisse on 3 November 1954. Picasso was devastated; for him, a vital part of tradition and art history disappeared with Matisse. His series is not only a tribute to Delacroix but also to Matisse and many other painters from the history of art, whose work he would reference. • The beginning of the Algerian War of Independence on 1 November 1954. The significant media attention to Algeria and political discussions in Picasso’s circle reminded him of Delacroix’s painting and of his desire to work on the subject himself. “When Matisse died he left his odalisques to me as a legacy”: With these words, in 1955, Picasso presented the Femmes d’Alger series he was developing to visitors to his studio. Odalisques, from the Ottoman word for chamber, oda, refer to depictions of seated or reclining, usually scantily clad women in an intimate, oriental interior. As a subject of painting, odalisques were especially popular in the nineteenth century. Even artists not known primarily for orientalist depictions, such as J.-A.-D. Ingres or Édouard Manet, tried their hand at them. Henri Matisse, who visited Algeria and Morocco several times, worked with the motif of the odalisque above all in the 1920s, furnishing his studio with oriental carpets and fabrics and portraying his models in ornamentally patterned garments and harem pants. Even though Picasso’s Femmes d’Alger were not about the depiction of a supposed “Orient,” with his series he consciously inserted himself into the history of modern Western art, seeing himself in the tradition of Delacroix and Matisse. First floor: Beginning: On 13 December 1954 – 120 years after Eugène Delacroix and almost 15 years after his own sketches – Picasso once again took up the motif of the “women of Algiers.” He produced two oil paintings in one day, version A in color and version B in grisaille, that is, in shades of gray. The ways in which they differ from Delacroix’s original are striking. Delacroix presented the women, dressed in traditional Arab clothing, and their surroundings in great detail. Picasso, on the other hand, focused on the anatomy of the figures and, unlike Delacroix, painted them with bare breasts. Details such as the niche with the rounded Moorish arch on the left, the water pipe, and clothing are rendered as abstractly as possible. Picasso omitted Delacroix’s fourth figure, the odalisque on the far left, showing only three women, the two seated in the center and the servant behind them, who has been redesignated as a waitress. After painting these two very similar versions, did Picasso already have a more extensive series in mind? We don’t know. In any event, two weeks later, on 28 December, he assembled four female figures for the first time in version C, like in Delacroix’s original. However, in compositional terms, rather than drawing closer to the original, Picasso moved further away: it is impossible to say with certainty which figure corresponds to which of Delacroix’s, and the posture of the woman on the far right is more suggestive of a yoga studio than a harem. Art historian Susan Galassi has identified work by Henri Matisse as the model for the upside-down female nude (left wall). The legs stretched upwards also appear in all the other versions. At the beginning of the new year, Picasso continued to experiment with this constellation. Variations: In mid-January 1955, Picasso painted two more variations, E and F, this time again with only three figures. While the narrow central figure from version C has disappeared, the one on the right spreads out, taking up almost the entire foreground. One of her breasts points downwards; in version E it is blue – an homage to Matisse’s Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), painted in 1907 as a reminder of his trip to the Algerian desert town of Biskra. The next day Picasso painted version F. Like in the painting from the previous day, the round arch wraps around the head of the woman sitting on the left like a halo. But here Picasso painted her face, which is reminiscent of the Femme fleur, the flower woman, a round face surrounded by blossoms, with which Picasso often depicted his former partner Françoise Gilot. The next day, Picasso dedicated an individual portrait to the servant, once again in grisaille Bodily Contortions: One week later, between 24 and 26 January 1955, Picasso executed three more paintings – this time in a significantly larger format.