Filled with the graceful lyricism and elegance that defines Pablo Picasso’s so-called ‘Ingres-esque’ style, Danseur et danseuse was created in 1925 during a sojourn the artist spent in Monte Carlo. Picasso, his ballet dancer wife, Olga, and their young son Paolo had been invited by the great impresario and director of the Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev, to celebrate Russian Easter with him and his ballet troop in Monte Carlo. The couple were so happily absorbed in Diaghilev’s world of dancers and socialites, all set in the glamorous sun-drenched town that Paul Rosenberg, the first owner of this pen and ink drawing, asked the artist if he had become ‘Monégasque’ (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 3, The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, London, 2009, p.282).

By this time, Picasso had known and worked with Diaghilev for many years; indeed it was through him that he had met Olga in Rome in 1917, when she was performing in one of his ballets. Diaghilev wanted Picasso to collaborate with him again after the success of Tricorne and had also enlisted Georges Braque to travel to Monte Carlo too to design the sets for Zéphire et Flore. Though Picasso turned down this offer to collaborate, he nevertheless immersed himself in the world of the dancers.

As well as passing their days on the beach – as John Richardson described: ‘Picasso, elegantly turned out in a navy blue jacket and white trousers, would dart about posing for snapshots on the beach with Olga looking sublimely happy and the ballet boys showing off their muscles’ (ibid., p.280) – Picasso also attended their often lively rehearsals, avidly depicting the performers in a series of line drawings such as Danseur et danseuse. Thanks to Diaghilev’s new musical prodigy, Vladimir Dukelsky, a jazz composer, the dancers often jived to the music he played (covertly, as Diaghilev despised jazz), performing the fast, frenetic moves of the Charleston. Picasso captured the dance troop both in these frenzied poses and in the more elegant, classical moves of the ballet, as the present work attests.

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