NARRATOR:
Two months after the death of Henri Matisse in 1954, Pablo Picasso began a series of 15 canvases based on the famous painting Women of Algiers by the 19th-century master Eugène Delacroix. He told a fellow painter:
PICASSO [ACTOR]:
“When Matisse died, he left me his odalisques as a legacy, and this is my idea of the Orient, though I have never been there."
NARRATOR:
This painting is the 13th canvas in Picasso’s series, executed in January of 1955. It depicts four women—three of them in harem costume—lounging in a jumbled, colorful interior. They pose languorously, their voluptuous bodies distorted to convey multiple perspectives. In subject and execution, Picasso pays homage to both Matisse, his long-time friend and rival, and Delacroix—an artist whom both men greatly admired.
In 1830, the French occupation of Algeria set in motion a century-long fascination with North African subjects. When Matisse and Picasso first met in 1906, Islamic influences fueled their quest for spiritual and artistic renewal. The outbreak of the Algerian Revolution in 1954, just days before Matisse’s death, signaled the end of Orientalism in France. Picasso’s cycle is a fitting, if unintended, memorial to this beautiful and unsettling tradition.
Women of Algiers, Version "I"
January 25, 1955
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
On View
This remarkable re-creation of the Women of Algiers, an iconic harem scene by the French Romanticist Eugène Delacroix, is one of fifteen paintings and over a hundred works on paper of this subject that Picasso made in a concentrated burst of activity in late 1954 and early 1955. Although the Spanish artist had long admired Delacroix’s masterpiece, the impetus to paint an odalisque was likely inspired by the death of Matisse that November. Speaking of his longtime friend and artistic rival, Picasso explained, “When Matisse died he left me his odalisques as a legacy, and this is my idea of the Orient, though I have never been there.”
Details
- Artist Name: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
- Title: Women of Algiers, Version "I"
- Date: January 25, 1955
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 38-1/8 x 51-1/8 in. (96.8 x 129.9 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1986.3.P
- Copyright: © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
[Paul Rosenberg, Paris].
Frua dei Angeli, Italy.
[Galerie Beyeler, Basel, sold 1973 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation, transferred 1986 to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Frua dei Angeli, Italy.
[Galerie Beyeler, Basel, sold 1973 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation, transferred 1986 to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Matisse/Odalisque
- Norton Simon Museum, 2019-02-22 to 2019-06-17
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best,2010, cat. 938 p. 353
- Zervos, Christian, Pablo Picasso: Oeuvres de 1953 à 1955,no. 353, pl. 130
- Montua, Gabriel (ed.), Picasso & Femmes d'Alger,2020, I p. 107 ; p. [96] (ill.), p. 98 (ill.)
- Steadman, David, The Connoisseur, p. 230
- Steinberg, Leo, Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-century Art, opp. p. 234
- Croutier, Alev Lytle, Harem: The World Behind the Veil, p. 204
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum,1989, p. 196
- Steadman, David W., The Connoisseur, p. 230
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