Les deux femmes nues

Over the time of four months, from November 1945 to February 1946, Picasso took this subject through a total of 18 states, in the course of which he completely revised the image and radically transformed his style. Only of the final, 18th state, an edition of fifty signed and numbered impressions was printed. For the fifth state, Picasso created a colour stone to experiment with. Mourlot writes: 'A ce moment, l'artiste fait une pierre spéciale au crayon pour une seconde couleur. Deux épreuves sont tirées en bistre sans donner satisfaction et la pierre est effacée.' The present impression, printed on a piece of scrap paper with lithographic compositions by another hand verso, must be one of these two impressions mentioned by Mourlot. (F. Mourlot, Picasso Lithographe, Paris, 1970, no. 16, p. 23 & 26 (another, black impression illustrated). It is a very pleasing, atmospheric and dream-like version of this scene, although when looking at the final state it becomes clear that Picasso was aiming at something else: within the parametres of the same composition, he was moving from an essentially naturalistic depiction of the human body to a highly distorted figurative style.