The Painter and the Model

Picasso’s picture The Painter and the Model, is one of many the artist would paint on this subject. In this version, which was finished in 1963, we see the painter sitting at his easel, with a canvas that is seen both the right and the wrong way round, while he paints a woman who is posing naked and who is also forms part of the picture that we see him is painting. On the yellow floor we can see a clear vertical line running along the easel, which divides the painting in two. The side on which the artist is sitting is cold and blue, while the other, where the model lies, is warmer and painted in sensual red and green.

At this point in his life, Picasso was married to his second wife, Jacqueline Roque. Despite his age, he almost obsessively made hundreds of studies of the subject of painter and model, in an attempt not to be left behind on the 1960s arts scene.

He lived near Cannes in the South of France at the time, in an isolated place where he could achieve the kind of privacy that fame and public recognition prevented him from otherwise enjoying.

(c) (R) 2012, MUSMon com S.L.