Femme Assise Picasso print

Judging by the paintings and drawings of this period, this remarkable print represents Dora Maar. Of Picasso's three mistresses at the time, Dora was on the wane. In the words of John Richardson, one of Picasso's premier biographers, "Picasso’s art always reflects the circumstances of his life, and we can watch the deterioration of his relationship with Dora in the exceedingly troubling portraits of her." (Picasso: Magic, Sex, Death, lectures on DVD, 2003) In this portrait, Picasso seems to have conflated her visage with his beloved dog's snout. Goeppert and Cramer write that this print likely represents an embracing couple. It however is clear to me that, apart from the possible snout, a single woman is depicted from the front and back simultaneously in yet another novel iteration of Picasso's cubist-surrealist styles. This figure is afforded sculptural volume by the many fine linear flourishes with which he endowed her unique anatomy.

This masterwork served as the frontispiece of book of poems written by his friend, Robert Desnos. The year of publication was wartime, and the poetry was a call to arms. The final poem included the prophetic statement, "Vivants, ne craignez rien de moi, car je suis mort (Have no fear of me, living ones, for I am dead)", for the Gestapo arrested Desnos for his involvement in the French Resistance, just before the publication of the book. He died 15 months later in captivity at the Nazi concentration camp Terezin. Timothy Adès, who has translated the poems (see http://www.bcla.org/tc2002/ades.htm ), has provided the following comments:

"Contrée (in print from May 31, 1944) appeared a month after Desnos had left the Royallieu camp at Compiègne [for Auschwitz; from there he was marched to Buchenwald, Flossenburg, and Flöha, where he worked as a slave labourer making aircraft parts; he died at Terezin]; so the poet never saw the collection in print. Contrée was published … at a time when Desnos often talked to Picasso, and was writing about him…. The title Contrée denotes both the various places visited in each poem (because it can mean something like Back Country) and the effect of 'countering', more or less by stealth, an enemy whose defeat is proclaimed: 'I have wished your death and there is nothing that can delay it.' The allusions multiply. Here is denunciation: 'on a yellow poster the word in black letters, plague;' the voice declaring 'the beautiful season is near;' and the poet's anticipatory epitaph, his refusal to give in: 'I lived intact, but I was prey.' Classic in form, and drawing on mythology, the poems were able to pass the censor; and their philosophy of human destiny puts into a wider context various topical allusions which those in the know could understand."

The first of the poems, with translation by Adès, reads as follows:

THE WATERFALL

What arrow split the sky and pierced the rock?
Vibrant, it spreads its peacock tail and flaunts
Its blurry shaft and sleek unblemished flights,
The way the midnight comet finds its mark.
The flesh is opened. For the blood to rise,
While lips suppress the murmurs and the cries,
A finger bids time stop, pre-occupies
The witness who records it with his eyes.
Silence? And yet we know the passwords well.
We strayed from our camp-fires, we sentinels:
Drifting from shady corners we can smell
Salt surf aromas, honeysuckle smells.
Dawn bursts on far-off depths; a sunbeam limns
Upon the waves, at last, a sketch that leads
Back the returning archer and his hymns:
A rainbow, with its quiver full of reeds.