Seated Man

‘Picasso spent the summer of 1914 in Avignon in the Company of his girlfriend Eva Gouel, and they shared a house near the city walls across from the Hospital. By August their idyll would be over when war was declared. However, in the first part of their stay the artist was extremely productive. The Museo Picasso Málaga now has in its permanent collection a group of compositions that were done that summer, including three trial proofs of an etching of Apples and several figure compositions: Man Holding a Bottle and Reclining Nude, and two versions of a Seated Man, including the present work.

At Avignon Picasso hired a male model with the idea of producing several compositions in which this figure would appear. The most worked out of the studies is this charcoal drawing of a Seated Man. The tall muscular man is shown posing naked seated on a chair. However, the chair itself is absent, and the model’s legs serve as his sole support. The use of heavy lines and shading in this drawing defines the space behind the figure and also accentuates certain features of his body, including the face, shoulders and torso.

In this drawing we have the opportunity to see how Picasso proceeded, changing his mind as he went along. The first sketch on this sheet shows the model seated with his legs spread wide apart. His left arm would have extended down to his left thigh, but the artist changed the position of these limbs: he scratched out his first idea and drew the arm closer to the body, and he made the leg much thinner, emphasizing the well-developed torso above. The fact that Picasso left visible his earlier idea adds to the notion of different views of the body, while also balancing the final composition’.


Text by Marilyn McCully in LEBRERO STALS, José. Museo Picasso Málaga. Collection. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2010, p. 34-35.