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Prints and Drawings
Photo credit: Yale University Art Gallery
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Artist: Pablo Picasso, Spanish, active France, 1881–1973
Printer: Ambroise Vollard, French, 1867–1939
Publisher: Atelier Lacourière et Frélaut, Paris, founded 1929
Two Statues
May 5, 1933
Etching
platemark: 26.4 × 19.1 cm (10 3/8 × 7 1/2 in.)
The Ernest C. Steefel Collection of Graphic Art, Gift of Ernest C. Steefel
1958.52.90
In this powerful etching, Picasso depicts a classical sculptor whose swirling, piercing eyes gaze at a seated female sculpture at left. Her striking profile is inspired not only by Picasso’s recent sculptures of his model, Marie-Thérèse Walter, but also by an African D’mba mask from the Baga people, in Guinea, which Picasso then had in his personal collection. Picasso suggests a charged confrontation between classical and African sculpture through a dense layer of frenzied etched lines that veil the image and transform it from a depiction of the artist’s studio into an evocation of the space of imagination itself.
Geography:
Made in France
Status:
Culture:
Spanish
Period:
20th century
Classification:
Works on Paper - Prints
Bibliography:
Susan Greenberg Fisher et al., Picasso and the Allure of Language, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2009), 23, 119–25, no. 14a, ill.
Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
