Suite Vollard, 1939, Paris: Marie-Therese Looking at Her Effigy As a Surrealist Sculpture
May 4, 1933
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Not on View

Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909–1977) walked into Picasso’s life as a teenager in the late 1920s. Her blond hair, full chin and blue eyes subtly began to populate his work, subversively reflecting the couple’s clandestine affair. By the early 1930s, Picasso had drawn from her features a kind of sexualized, surrealist inspiration, and her sweeping curves and casual sensuality prompted a number of paintings, drawings and even sculpture, culminating in his great, colorful canvases of 1932. In this etching, Walter is represented by a simple, unmodulated line. In Suite Vollard, in which she stares at a surrealist representation of herself, Walter becomes the embodiment of a classical statue, as her pose and features, coupled with the reduction of her form, recall a meaningful art-historical past.

Details

  • Artist Name: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
  • Title: Suite Vollard, 1939, Paris: Marie-Therese Looking at Her Effigy As a Surrealist Sculpture
  • Date: May 4, 1933
  • Medium: Etching
  • Edition: Edition of 50
  • Dimensions: 10-1/2 x 7-3/4 in. (26.7 x 19.7 cm)
  • Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
  • Accession Number: F.1969.46.074.G
  • Copyright: © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Object Information

[on loan]

  • Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, 1970-02-06 to

[on loan]

  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1970-06-10 to 1973-08

Picasso: Graphic Magician, Prints from the Norton Simon Museum

  • Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, 1999-01-24 to 1999-03-28
  • Toledo Museum of Art, 1999-11-07 to 2000-01-16
  • Norton Simon Museum, 2000-04-12 to 2000-09-04

Pablo Picasso: The Vollard Suite

  • Norton Simon Museum, 1990-03-08 to 1990-12-16

Seven Decades of Picasso

  • Norton Simon Museum, 1984 to 1986

[on loan]

  • University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, 1975-01-07 to 1975-03-05

Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres

  • Norton Simon Museum, 2009-10-30 to 2010-04-05

Seven Decades of Picasso

  • Norton Simon Museum, 1979-10-11 to 1980
  • Bloch, Georges, Pablo Picasso, Catalogue de l'oeuvre grave et lithographie 1904-1967, 1968, nos. 134-233 pp. 56-76
  • Parke-Bernet Galleries, Modern and Old Master Prints, 1969, no. 230, repr. in part.
  • Fischer Fine Art Ltd., Picasso, The Vollard Suite of 100 Etchings 1930-1937, 1973, nos. 1-100 pp. 19-31
  • Fryberger, Betsy G. and Gloria Williams, Clinton Adams, David Carrier, and Pat Gilmour, Picasso: Graphic Magician, Prints from the Norton Simon Museum, 1998, p. 124
  • Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 703 p. 329

Additional Artwork by Artist

La Table, Plate II in "Saint Matorel" by Max Jacob Pablo Picasso 1910 (published 1911)
Long-Haired Young Girl Pablo Picasso November 6, 1945
Long-Haired Young Girl Pablo Picasso November 7, 1945

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