The siesta

‘As part of the first major retrospective of his oeuvre, organised by the Galeries Georges Petit in June 1932, Picasso had his older Works confront 30 or so pictures painted between December 1931 and April 1932, some 20 of which depicted Marie-Thérèse Walter in the guise of a young woman sleeping or reading, or in bust form. With this exhibition Picasso explicitly exalted his new muse, characterised by her thick blond hair, chubby features dominated by a prominent nose and voluptuous forms.

View of the exhibition Pablo Picasso at Galerie Georges Petit, with annotations by Margaret Scolari Barr and Alfred H. Barr, Jr., 1932. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York © Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence © Succession Picasso, Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Málaga, 2024

The figure of the beloved blossomed in his painting, notably during the summer of 1932, while Olga and Paulo were staying in the south of France. In The Siesta [The Nap] Picasso depicts Marie-Thérèse lying naked on the grass in full daylight. The artist perceives the young woman as a lunar character and this play of oppositions reaches its peak in Boisgeloup, immersed in a privileged setting of greenery and light. The pastel colour range of the nudes in the garden, painted that same summer, becomes iridescent and intensifies on contact with Marie-Thérèse, offering herself alone, imperious, as she surrenders to sleep. The closed, crescent-moon eye, symbol of orgasmic pleasure, and the ecstatic face and body bespeak the divinity radiating from her complete harmony with nature. Since the spring Picasso had been seeking a new formula to represent his young mistress: Marie-Thérèse offers herself to the gaze of the artist, her upside-down face in profile situated in the alignment of curved and linear shapes evoking the thread of life. John Richardson has drawn attention to the possible influence of Jean Painlevé’s early films revealing an unsuspected and marvellous underwater fauna, and to which the fishtail shape of the right foot, the hands that merge into one rounded mass and the elasticity of the pose might correspond.

Jean Painlevé. Lobster claw, 1929 © 2024 Archives Jean Painlevé. All rights reserved © Jean Painlevé, VEGAP, Málaga, 2024

The contorte body, ready to unfurl, also mimics the blossoming of a plant, lilac in color, beneath the diurnal or nocturnal light of an enveloping sky, a reminder of the metamorphosis Picasso had caused his model to undergo in the pages of a sketchbook from December of the previous year (private collection). Marie-Thérèse’s erotic posture is, finally, close to the one chosen by the Surrealists in entitled The Phenomenon of Ecstasy, published in number 3-4 of the magazine Minotaure in December 1933’.

Salvador Dalí. The Phenomenon of Ecstasy, 1933. Published in the magazine Minotaure, December 1933, no. 3-4, pp. 76-77. Biblioteca Museo Picasso Málaga © Salvador Dalí, Fundación Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP, Málaga, 2024

Text: Artwork commented by Cécile Godefroy in: LEBRERO, José (dir.). Pablo Picasso. New Collection 2017-2020. [Exh. cat. Museo Picasso Málaga, 2017]. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2017, p. 192-193.