Executed in 1932, Le Sauvetage I belongs to a series of prints and drawings completed on the subject following an accident where his beloved Marie-Thérèse Walter, whilst kayaking on the rat-infested river Marne, fell in and contracted a near fatal illness.
In Le Sauvetage I, the sensuous curves of Picasso’s earlier works from this year are now less prominent as sharper angles are introduced. In his observation of Picasso’s approach to this subject, John Richardson explains: “He transposes the accident from the icy, rat-infested river to a sunny beach, where he envisions Marie-Thérèse being saved from drowning by her sisters or alternate versions of herself. She looks inert - maybe alive, maybe dead. The pathos of these images is tinged with eroticism. The drowned girls — eyes closed, head thrown back, breasts thrust up — swoons erotically in the arms of one of her alter egos, while others dive, swim and play ball, just as they did at Dinard in 1928" (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, New York, 2007, pp. 487-488).