Picasso Version H ( I and J) depicts the Danger and Allure of the Women of Algiers

My copy of Picasso's version H

Picasso reportedly told his lover Francoise Gilot that there were two types of women: Goddesses and Doormats. In this painted version H, he goes back to square one, and seems to start over with his attempts to translate Delacroix’ Women of Algiers in Their Apartment.  Concentrating on the two figures in the foreground, Picasso contrasts his approach to them, exhibiting the danger and allure of an Odalisque. To the right, the shifting jumbled mass of the reclining woman is like a hallucination. This cubist affront of the body is how Picasso paints women he is breaking up with. At the time his lover and mother of two of his children, Gilot, was leaving him. The regal hookah smoker to the left who is both poised and paused, was modeled after Picasso’s new lover and future wife, JaquelineRoque.

Lounging, for all we know, in the storage of  Guiseppe Nachmad, a private collector in Switzerland, it was last seen publicly in 2010 at Tate Liverpool in a special exhibition called Picasso: Peace and Freedom. The show was curated by Prof. Lynda Morris, AHRC Research Fellow at Norwich University College of the Arts, and Dr.Christoph Grunenberg, Director, Tate Liverpool. And there exists a small photograph of it hanging above the couch in the Ganz living room. 

Version I was painted January 25^th, 1955, belongs to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasedena, California. 

My sketch of Picasso's version I

Of the 885 works owned by Norton Simon, this work is not on view. Emily A. Beeny, Curator at the Getty, who was associate curator of the Norton Simon Museum, has narrated a good 6-minute video about the Picassocollection and mentions that Picasso said, “Painting is a sum of destructions”. That rings true especially in this work where he has scraped away much of the details. The relaxed brushwork and color is focus here. Picasso limits his palette to the primaries and Black and white. This version is much looser and sketchier than version H. It is as if Picasso used one brush and the leftover paints from painting version H to replicate the scene. 

An artist might do this to enable the essence of the composition to shine through and to explore where the unifying elements lie.  It’s like I tell my students, “squint and just look at the main shapes to see what is working, or not”.

My copy of version J

Version J is like versions H and I, but tighter and more unified. Color is secondary to form and shape. It sold through Sotheby’s in 2006 for $18.6 million and is now in the collection of the shady art collecting Helly Nahmad who resides, (after a brief stint in Otisville correctional facility), in the NY Trump Towers, and Monaco. The painting is reproduced in the 2006 catalogue of Nahmad’s exhibit Picasso: La Californie(London)