Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957)
Chandler Christy vs. Pablo Picasso from the Vanity Fair Series Impossible Conversations
signed 'COVARRUBIAS' (lower right)
gouache on board
9¹⁄₈ x 8¹⁄₂ in. (23.2 x 22 cm.)
Executed circa 1930.

Private collection, Vero Beach.
By descent from the above to the present owner.

Recorriendo el mundo del chamaco Covarrubias, Mexico City and New York, Pablo Goebel Fine Arts and Mexico City, New York Throckmorton Fine Art, 2017, p. 120 (print version illustrated in color).

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Lot Essay

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Adriana Williams, dated 17 July 2020.

Mr. C.: May I tell you, Mr. Picasso, why there is no sale for your stuff in America; why I make ten times as much there as you do?
Mr. P: Please do, I am agog with interest.
Mr. C.: It is because you don’t paint girls; young girls, cute girls. You paint too many men; funny-looking men. The public doesn’t like men. They like girls—girls with smiles, and golden curls, and puppies, and tennis racquets, and—
Mr. P.: And, very possibly, bathing suits?
Mr. C.: Right! The public likes sex—When you paint girls you put square legs on them, cubes, geometrical forms—and the pictures never sell. When I paint them I always make a sale. Why? Because I put round legs on them.
Mr. P.: Then the public likes round girls?
Mr. C.: Very round.
Mr. P.: But I simply can’t see girls that way.
Mr. C.: That’s because you see the wrong kind of girls. Now, I think I can be of very great help to you. When you come to New York I’ll be delighted to lend you my little red address book.*
*"Howard Chandler Christie vs. Pablo Picasso" from the Vanity Fair Series, Impossible Interviews, no. 3, February 1932, p. 56.