PICASSO (2023) OUNCE "JACQUELINE SEATED"ID92937012
On the occasion of the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Ruiz Picasso, the National Mint and Stamp Factory dedicates a collection of commemorative coins to the Spanish painter, the inimitable creator of the various currents that revolutionized the visual arts of the 20th century.
On the reverse is a reproduction of the work titled "Jacqueline seated", made by Pablo Picasso in 1954, which is kept in the Picasso Museum Málaga. To the right of the image, the legend JACQUELINE SITTING.
On the obverse a detail of the Portrait of Pablo Picasso in a white sweater in his studio Le Fournas, Vallauris, taken by the photographer Edward Quinn in 1953, is reproduced.
| Shape | Square |
| Series | Picasso Fiftieth Anniversary |
| Year | 2023 |
| Colour | Yes |
| Quality | Proof |
| Face Value (Euro) | 10 |
| Size (mm) | 36 X 36 |
| Alloy (‰) | 999 |
| Metal | Silver |
| Weight (g) | 31.41 |
| Maximum Mintage (units) | 10,000 |
"JACQUELINE SITTING" PICASSO (2023) OUNCE
Unlike the painters known as "Orientalists" who were looking for a supposedly exotic setting, Picasso was born in the southern side of Europe, where light becomes a great protagonist. When the painter decides to convert his studio and his house into an outbuilding located between pine trees and sunrises on the French Riviera, his painting and his ceramics become happier, and his symbolic fields are populated with fauns, nymphs, satyrs who look smiling at the old stories that sailors of ancient centuries told when they returned from their voyages through the classical islands.
«The role of painting – says Picasso –, for me, is not to paint movement, to put reality in motion. His role, for me, is more to stop the movement.
You have to go further than the movement to stop the image.
If not, he runs after her.
Only in that moment, for me, is reality »*.
Picasso met his future wife Jacqueline Roque Hutin in 1952, in the Madoura pottery shop, where she was employed, and began photographing her in 1954. In the autumn of that year, to escape the small-town atmosphere of Vallauris, they moved to his Parisian studio on the rue des Grands Augustins. In the first half of October, Picasso began a series of joyful portraits of his new muse, including this seated Jacqueline.
The placement of Jacqueline's figure in front of three stripes of color—red for the ground, yellow for the space behind, and blue for the sky—suggests an outdoor setting under the Mediterranean sun, although the painting was painted in Paris. At the same time, Picasso undoubtedly remembered his friend Matisse, already close to death, who used to place the female figures in his paintings on large patches of flat color.
Each time Picasso forged the image of a new woman in his life, he selected those features that for him conveyed both her physical appearance and her temperament. Here he started with her head, which, what is seen of the underlying painting reveals, he first placed centered and facing in the opposite direction. The cool, calm face of the final version, reflecting Jacqueline's supportive role in the relationship, combines profile and front views, emphasizing her large dark eyes and straight nose. Her abundant hair seems to be gathered at the nape of her neck; the blue curve to the right of her could also represent a bow. In contrast to later, explicit paintings of Jacqueline nude, in this one her compact body is translated into an almost flat rectangular shape, in which the diamond pattern of her dress folds into the unique curve of her knees.