NARRATOR:
This faceted and fractured sculpture was done in 1909, when Picasso and his colleagues were developing Cubism. With this revolutionary style, artists worked to reveal the essence of objects by showing them from multiple viewpoints at the same time. In Cubist paintings, the flatness of the canvas is emphasized. The artist does this by destroying the illusion of space and volume, breaking three-dimensional objects into multiple planes. The planes are arranged so that we can actually see them, rather than just infer their existence.
Sculpture though, by its very nature, is already three-dimensional. Translating the Cubist approach to sculpture was an enormous challenge even for Picasso, as this early Cubist work shows. The distorted features, intersecting planes, and warped shapes of Fernande Olivier – Picasso’s mistress during the early years of the century – creates the tension, contrast and energy that is very much in line with the goals of Cubism.
Head of Fernande
1909; cast 1960
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
On View
With its startlingly faceted features, Head of Fernande is considered the first Cubist sculpture. The bust is loosely based on Fernande Olivier, Picasso’s lover and muse, who inspired him to produce an astonishing sixty works of art during a particularly prolific period in 1909. Picasso modeled the original head in clay, alternating between building up mass and paring it away. This duality of process is preserved in the bronze cast of the sculpture seen here, as Fernande’s facial features emerge and are obliterated by bulges, gouges, ridges and recesses. No two elements are alike: notice the eyebrows, one of which is incised while the other protrudes in relief. Picasso employed these oppositions to animate the perception of his work. As he explained years later, “I want to draw the mind in a direction it’s not used to and wake it up. I want to help the viewer discover something he wouldn’t have discovered without me.”
After Head of Fernande was cast in bronze (beginning in 1910, with a second edition in 1960) it was widely exhibited and published. Picasso’s fragmentation of form influenced a generation of sculptors, including Jacques Lipchitz, whose Bather III is also on view in this gallery.
Details
- Artist Name: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
- Title: Head of Fernande
- Date: 1909; cast 1960
- Medium: Bronze
- Edition: Edition of 9, Cast No. 3
- Dimensions: 16-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 10-1/4 in. (41.3 x 24.1 x 26 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1969.07.S
- Copyright: © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
[on loan]
- Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, 1969-02-20 to 1969-07-08
The Cubist Epoch
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1970-12-15 to 1971-02-21
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971-04-07 to 1971-06-07
Picassos in Southern California: A Tribute to the Artist at 90
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971-10-25 to 1971-11-21
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
Portraits by Picasso: Images of Friends, Lovers and Mentors
- Norton Simon Museum, 1987-07-23 to 1988-05-22
Selections from the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art
- Princeton University Art Museum, 1972-12-03 to 1974-07-17
Seven Decades of Picasso
- Norton Simon Museum, 1979-10-11 to 1980
Reinstallation of South Wing
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-10-07 to 1995-08-13
Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres
- Norton Simon Museum, 2009-10-30 to 2010-04-05
- Selections from the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art, no. 86 p. 231
- Tancock, John, The Connoisseur, fig. 6 pp. 238-240
- The Cubist Epoch, pl. 281, no. 288 p. 232
- Zervos, Christian, Pablo Picasso: Oeuvres de 1906 a 1912, 1942, pt. I, no. 573, pl. 266
- Tate Gallery, Picasso: Sculpture, Ceramics, Graphic Works, 1967, p. 30
- University: A Princeton Quarterly 1974, 1974,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 572 p. 314
- Madeline, Laurence, Picasso 1932, 2017, CAT. 59 p. 98
Additional Artwork by Artist
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