''Bust of a Woman (Marie-Thérèse)'' is a 1931 sculpture by the Spanish artist

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

that depicts

Marie-Thérèse Walter Marie-Thérèse Walter (13 July 1909 – 20 October 1977) was a French model and lover of Pablo Picasso from 1927 to about 1935 and the mother of their daughter Maya Widmaier-Picasso. Their relationship began when she was seventeen years old; he w ...

, who was Picasso's

mistress Mistress is the feminine form of the English word "master" (''master'' + ''-ess'') and may refer to: Romance and relationships * Mistress (lover), a term for a woman who is in a sexual and romantic relationship with a man who is married to a d ...

at the time of its creation. In 2016 the ownership of the sculpture was the subject of a legal dispute between

Qatar Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it sh ...

and the American art dealer

Larry Gagosian Lawrence Gilbert "Larry" Gagosian (born April 19, 1945) is an American art dealer who owns the Gagosian Gallery chain of art galleries. Working in concert with collectors including Douglas S. Cramer, Eli Broad, and Keith Barish, he developed a r ...

, who had resold the bust to

Leon Black Leon David Black (born July 31, 1951) is an American investor and the co-founder and former-CEO of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Black also served as the chairman of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City from Ju ...

Design

The sculpture is a

bust Bust commonly refers to: * A woman's breasts * Bust (sculpture), of head and shoulders * An arrest Bust may also refer to: Places *Bust, Bas-Rhin, a city in France *Lashkargah, Afghanistan, known as Bust historically Media * ''Bust'' (magazine ...

made from

plaster Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for Molding (decorative), moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of ...

. The nose of the sculpture is formed from a representation of Picasso's penis that is draped over Walter's forehead. Picasso's biographer John Richardson felt that the breasts of the bust gave it "the look of a crouching Sphinx". The piece was created at the same time as another plaster bust, ''Head of a Woman''. Contemporaneous photographs of the two pieces in Picasso's studio at Boisgeloup show that he had originally attempted to fuse the two busts together and that they both had long "giraffe like" necks. ''Head of a Woman'' also references Picasso's genitalia, its eyeballs have been likened to testicles and its nose is also modeled on Picasso's penis.

Analysis

Blake Gopnik discussed the sculpture in an article for

Artnet Artnet.com is an art market website. It is operated by Artnet Worldwide Corporation, which has headquarters in New York City, in the United States, and is owned by Artnet AG, a German publicly traded company based in Berlin that is listed on t ...

. Gopnik was critical of Picasso's attitude towards Walter feeling that "Whatever identity Marie–Thérèse had before she met Pablo gets subsumed, at least in his mind and this sculpture, into her role as an extension and vehicle for his overweening masculinity". Gopnik paid particular focus on the mouth of the bust describing it as "...beautiful, delicate, sweet...priceless? It's as though Picasso needed to acknowledge the beauty of his mistress, and maybe also his real love for her, even as he brutalized her in art. Or it could be that he realized her lovely mouth was crucial to giving the rest of the piece its brutality." Gopnik concluded that "...rather than being a charming masterpiece, this $100 million bust is a work of tragic genius – and one that no one should want to live with...I hate Picasso's male-chauvinist vision of women, but I have to admire how brilliantly he builds it".

History

The bust was displayed as part of the ''Picasso Sculpture'' exhibition at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(MoMa) in New York in 2016. This was the largest exhibition of Picasso's sculptures for 50 years. A legal dispute arose over the sculpture's sale and ownership between the art agency Pelham Europe, acting on behalf of the

i royal family, and the American art dealer

, who had resold the bust to Leon Black. A trial was set for September 2016. In June 2016, the lawsuit was settled by Maya Widmaier Picasso, the owner of the sculpture. The settlement included Leon Black getting the sculpture and Widmaier Picasso paying Pelham an undisclosed amount. The revelation of the disputed sale drew attention to the sculpture at the MoMa exhibition, a security guard was subsequently posted near it and Gopnik recalled that "

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ers were all over it".

References

External links

Text of Pelham Europe's counterclaims against Larry Gagosian, Diana Widmaier-Picasso and Leon Black
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bust of a Woman (Marie-Therese) 1931 sculptures Busts in the United States Phallic symbols Plaster sculptures Portraits of women Sculptures by Pablo Picasso