1909
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Picasso 1907-1931 Kandinsky Kirchner
See also : Picasso 1907-1931 Kandinsky Kirchner
masterpiece
1909-1910 Nus dans la Forêt by Léger
Kröller-Müller Museum
Fernand Léger's Nudes in the Forest (Nus dans la forêt, 1909–1910) is a landmark oil on canvas (approximately 120 × 170 cm) that marks his decisive entry into Cubism and the birth of his distinctive variant, often called "Tubism" (a term coined mockingly by critic Louis Vauxcelles for its emphasis on cylindrical, tubular forms). Painted during a transitional phase in Léger's career, it represents his first major large-scale work in this new direction, exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911 where it caused a sensation and helped solidify his place among the Cubists.
The composition is showing the tangled mass of cylindrical forms in muted tones.
The painting is now housed at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands.
Composition and Description
At first glance, the canvas appears chaotic—a dense, interlocking pile of geometric shapes in a subdued, near-monochromatic palette of grays, blues, greens, and subtle purplish sheens. Yet from this apparent confusion emerges three powerful, nude male figures (often interpreted as woodcutters or laborers):
Léger himself described the work as a "battle of volumes", deliberately avoiding strong color to focus on form: "I thought that I shouldn’t give it any colour." The muted tones and metallic-like sheen evoke machined or industrial surfaces, even in this ostensibly natural scene.Here are close-up details highlighting the cylindrical construction and textural contrasts:
Key Techniques and Innovations
Nudes in the Forest was Léger's breakthrough: his "first real Cubist painting" and a bridge from Impressionism/Fauvism to his mature style. It announced his personal Cubism—volumetric, optimistic, and machine-inspired—setting the stage for later works like The City (1919) and Contrasting Forms series, where he fully embraced bold color and mechanical subjects.
The painting challenges viewers to reconsider the human body in an era of rapid modernization: the nudes are not passive ideals but robust, almost architectural entities fused with their environment. Its "strange, pulsating rhythms" and industrial undertones make it a prescient vision of 20th-century art's shift toward abstraction, mechanization, and the everyday. Scholars see it as bridging early Cubism to movements like Purism and even Pop Art, influencing artists who celebrated form, volume, and modernity.
The composition is showing the tangled mass of cylindrical forms in muted tones.
The painting is now housed at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands.
Composition and Description
At first glance, the canvas appears chaotic—a dense, interlocking pile of geometric shapes in a subdued, near-monochromatic palette of grays, blues, greens, and subtle purplish sheens. Yet from this apparent confusion emerges three powerful, nude male figures (often interpreted as woodcutters or laborers):
- A standing figure on the left with raised arms.
- A seated or reclining figure slightly lower in the center.
- Another figure on the right, also with one arm raised.
Léger himself described the work as a "battle of volumes", deliberately avoiding strong color to focus on form: "I thought that I shouldn’t give it any colour." The muted tones and metallic-like sheen evoke machined or industrial surfaces, even in this ostensibly natural scene.Here are close-up details highlighting the cylindrical construction and textural contrasts:
Key Techniques and Innovations
- Tubism / Cylindrical Volumetric Cubism — Unlike Picasso and Braque's flatter, more faceted Analytic Cubism, Léger retained strong three-dimensionality and volume. He reduced forms to basic geometric solids (cylinders, cones, spheres), drawing from Cézanne's famous advice to treat nature through these shapes.
- Dynamic Tension and Contrast — Planned clashes of curves vs. straight lines, large masses vs. small details, light vs. dark create pulsating rhythms. The disjunction is not random but orchestrated to reassemble the scene dynamically.
- Monumental Scale and Impersonal Figures — The nudes are powerful yet inexpressive, almost robotic—foreshadowing Léger's later "machine aesthetic" and celebration of the industrial age.
- Rejection of Traditional Nude — Far from idealized classical or sensual nudes, these figures are fragmented, mechanical, and integrated into the landscape, symbolizing a modern harmony (or tension) between humanity and nature/technology.
- Paul Cézanne — Primary source: the 1907 Cézanne retrospective profoundly impacted Léger, inspiring his focus on underlying structure, geometric reduction, and constructive brushwork. This work is often seen as an homage to Cézanne's analytical approach.
- Analytic Cubism (Picasso/Braque) — Léger adopted fragmentation and multiple viewpoints but diverged by preserving volume and emphasizing cylinders over flat planes.
- Emerging Industrial/Modern Optimism — Léger's rural background contrasted with his fascination with machinery; the tubular forms evoke pipes, smokestacks, or robotic parts, aligning with contemporary enthusiasm for industrialization (parallels to Italian Futurism).
Nudes in the Forest was Léger's breakthrough: his "first real Cubist painting" and a bridge from Impressionism/Fauvism to his mature style. It announced his personal Cubism—volumetric, optimistic, and machine-inspired—setting the stage for later works like The City (1919) and Contrasting Forms series, where he fully embraced bold color and mechanical subjects.
The painting challenges viewers to reconsider the human body in an era of rapid modernization: the nudes are not passive ideals but robust, almost architectural entities fused with their environment. Its "strange, pulsating rhythms" and industrial undertones make it a prescient vision of 20th-century art's shift toward abstraction, mechanization, and the everyday. Scholars see it as bridging early Cubism to movements like Purism and even Pop Art, influencing artists who celebrated form, volume, and modernity.
PICASSO
1
Special Report
Cubisme by Picasso and Braque
Georges Braque's Cubism represents one of the most profound collaborations in 20th-century art. Born in 1882 in Argenteuil, France, Braque co-invented Cubism with Pablo Picasso between roughly 1907 and 1914, fundamentally reshaping pictorial representation by fragmenting objects, presenting multiple viewpoints simultaneously, and emphasizing the flatness of the canvas over illusionistic depth. While Picasso often receives more credit for the movement's dramatic breakthroughs, Braque provided much of its structural rigor, methodical progression, and key innovations—particularly the invention of papier collé (pasted paper) in 1912.Braque's Cubist phase built directly on Paul Cézanne's geometric simplification and constructive brushwork, which he encountered through the influential 1907 Cézanne retrospective. His early Cubist works abstracted landscapes and still lifes into geometric schemas, prompting critic Louis Vauxcelles to coin the term "Cubism" in 1908–1909 after viewing Braque's paintings (describing them as "bizarreries cubiques" or cubic oddities).
Phases of Braque's CubismBraque and Picasso developed Cubism in two main phases, working so closely (especially 1909–1914) that their paintings were often indistinguishable—Braque famously likened their partnership to being "roped together like mountaineers."
(Georges Braque, The Portuguese, 1911 – late Analytic Cubism showing a musician's form dissolved into rhythmic planes and subtle lettering.)
Braque's collages are typically more restrained and intimate than Picasso's, focusing on elegant structure and perceptual subtlety.
Broader Contributions and Legacy
Phases of Braque's CubismBraque and Picasso developed Cubism in two main phases, working so closely (especially 1909–1914) that their paintings were often indistinguishable—Braque famously likened their partnership to being "roped together like mountaineers."
- Proto-Cubism / Early Analytic (1907–1909)
Braque's L'Estaque landscapes (summer 1908) marked the transition. Influenced by Cézanne's tilted planes and geometric reduction, he abstracted houses, trees, and hills into slab-like volumes with warped perspective and sober coloring. These works flattened space and emphasized structure over naturalistic detail, laying groundwork for full Cubism.
- Analytic Cubism (1909–1912)
The most radical phase: objects (usually still lifes—violins, bottles, glasses, palettes) are dissected into overlapping facets and translucent planes in a near-monochromatic palette (browns, grays, ochres). Multiple viewpoints merge on the canvas, creating ambiguity and shallow space. Braque's works emphasize tactile texture (sometimes adding sand) and perceptual puzzles.Key examples:- Violin and Palette (1909–1910): A trompe-l'œil nail and stenciled letters add illusionistic elements amid fragmentation.
- The Portuguese (1911): A seated guitarist (a sailor playing mandolin) reduced to interlocking planes with stenciled lettering; one of the "hermetic" high Analytic works.
(Georges Braque, The Portuguese, 1911 – late Analytic Cubism showing a musician's form dissolved into rhythmic planes and subtle lettering.)
- Synthetic Cubism (1912–1914)
Braque initiated this shift by inventing papier collé in autumn 1912: gluing faux bois (wood-grain) wallpaper, newspaper, and other papers onto supports, then drawing/painting over them. This technique reversed Analytic deconstruction—building up compositions from real fragments to evoke objects synthetically. It emphasized materiality, flatness, and playful representation (e.g., printed patterns standing for wood or news).Pivotal work:- Fruit Dish and Glass (1912): Charcoal, gouache, and pasted wallpaper on paper—the first true papier collé, framing a still life with wood-grain strips.
- Fruit Dish and Glass (1912): Charcoal, gouache, and pasted wallpaper on paper—the first true papier collé, framing a still life with wood-grain strips.
Braque's collages are typically more restrained and intimate than Picasso's, focusing on elegant structure and perceptual subtlety.
Broader Contributions and Legacy
- Braque's innovations—geometric reduction, papier collé, texture experiments—expanded Cubism's vocabulary and affirmed the canvas as an autonomous object.
- After WWI (where he was wounded), he continued a looser Cubist style with richer color, texture, and still-life focus, but never abandoned fragmentation and simultaneous perspective.
- Unlike Picasso's constant reinvention, Braque remained committed to Cubist principles, producing luminous, harmonious works into the 1950s–60s.
Spring 1909 Arlequin
2026 for sale on May 19 by Sotheby's
Analytic Cubism, developed primarily by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between roughly 1908 and 1912 (with its "high" or "hermetic" phase around 1910–1912), marked a radical shift in Western art. Artists "analyzed" subjects by breaking them into geometric facets, overlapping planes, and multiple viewpoints, often using a restricted palette of muted browns, grays, ochres, and greens to emphasize structure and form over color, illusionistic depth, or narrative. This approach rejected traditional single-point perspective and naturalistic representation, aiming instead to depict objects as they exist in space and time from various angles simultaneously. Picasso's Harlequin (or Arlequin) motif recurs throughout his career, originating in his Rose Period (1904–1906) as a commedia dell'arte figure symbolizing the itinerant performer, melancholy outsider, or the artist's alter ego—often linked to themes of duality, theatricality, identity, and marginality. In the context of early Cubism (around 1909), Harlequin served as a vehicle for formal experimentation rather than primarily narrative or symbolic content.
Theme, Inspiration, Intention, and Breakthrough in the Harlequin Context (ca. 1909)
Arlequin (Buste) (oil on canvas, 73 × 60.3 cm, signed on the reverse) depicts a bust of Harlequin emerging from cascading three-dimensional geometric forms. Executed in spring 1909 (likely in Paris before the Spain trip), it sits at a transitional moment: post-Les Demoiselles and early experiments, but pre-full Analytic fragmentation. The Harlequin figure appears poised on the threshold of Cubism, with geometric structuring beginning to assert itself over more traditional modeling.
By summer 1909 in the remote village of Horta de Ebro (accessible only by mule), Picasso produced a series of portraits of his partner Fernande Olivier. Femme assise (Fernande) (oil on canvas, 81 × 65 cm) belongs to the second group of these Horta portraits. It features highly geometricized, broken-down forms with blade-like edges, angular interlocking planes, an elongated neck, pronounced eyebrows, and a "reversible cube" forehead (readable as both protruding and receding). A stylized vase of flowers appears to the side. Compared to earlier, softer Horta works, this piece shows harder-edged faceting and more stylized backgrounds, advancing the deconstruction of the figure into structural components. The series as a whole marked the arrival of Analytic Cubism by treating the sitter as a motif for formal exploration rather than portraiture.
This evolution illustrates Picasso's rapid development: from the spring bust's emerging geometry applied to a familiar motif (Harlequin) to the summer's more radical, sculptural faceting in the Fernande series, where form becomes the true subject.
Major Artworks in/Related to the Harlequin Series Around This Period
Picasso's Harlequin depictions span phases, but in the early Cubist context (1908–1912), they are less a formal "series" than recurring explorations:
Early Cubist works, including 1909 experiments, faced significant resistance. Critics and the public often mocked them as incomprehensible "little cubes" or chaotic (e.g., reactions at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants). The fragmented forms challenged conventional viewing, appearing discomforting or revolutionary. Dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler supported the movement, but broader acceptance grew slowly. By the 1920s–1930s, with retrospectives like MoMA's 1939 "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," Cubism gained recognition as a foundational modern movement. The Harlequin motif added emotional or theatrical layers that some critics appreciated amid the formalism.
Legacy
Picasso's Analytic Cubism, exemplified in these 1909 transitions, revolutionized representation and influenced countless 20th-century movements (Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism, and beyond). The Harlequin motif underscores Picasso's lifelong themes of identity and performance. These works paved the way for high Analytic (near-abstraction) and then Synthetic Cubism (collage, brighter colors, simpler shapes). Today, they are seen as pivotal in dismantling illusionism and emphasizing the artwork as an autonomous object. Auction records reflect their enduring value (e.g., a related 1909 Fernande portrait sold for over $63 million in 2016, a record for Cubism at the time).
The 2008 Withdrawn Sotheby's Harlequin and the 2026 Arlequin (Buste)
Yes, the Harlequin withdrawn by Sotheby's on or around November 3, 2008, is the same piece as the Arlequin (Buste) (Spring 1909) now offered in the 2026 Modern Evening Auction. It belonged to Surrealist artist Enrico Donati (who acquired it cheaply in the late 1940s) and his wife Adele. In 2008, it was estimated above $30 million but pulled for "private reasons" shortly before the sale (reportedly without a guarantee, amid competing offers). It had not been publicly exhibited for about 45 years at that time. The painting is now part of the Donati collection sale, with an estimate in the region of $40 million, highlighting its rarity as an early Cubist Harlequin portrait. It will be sold by Sotheby's on May 19, 2026, lot 11. The video is shared by the auction house.
These pieces capture Picasso at a moment of intense innovation, using familiar motifs like Harlequin or his partner to push painting toward a new structural language that defined modern art.
Theme, Inspiration, Intention, and Breakthrough in the Harlequin Context (ca. 1909)
- Theme: The Harlequin bust explores the human figure through fragmentation and reconstruction. It blends the theatrical, diamond-costumed character with emerging geometric abstraction, emphasizing volume, planes, and structural complexity over emotional expressiveness or anecdote.
- Inspiration: Picasso drew from Paul Cézanne's emphasis on underlying geometric forms (cylinders, spheres, cones) and multiple perspectives. The 1909 works also reflect influences from Iberian sculpture and African art (seen earlier in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907). The Harlequin motif itself stemmed from Picasso's long fascination with circus and commedia dell'arte figures, which he revisited as a stand-in for the modern artist navigating tradition and innovation.
- Intention: Picasso sought to dismantle traditional representation and rebuild it on the canvas as a constructed, sculptural entity. In the 1909 Harlequin and related Fernande portraits, the goal was to achieve a "sculptural" fullness on a two-dimensional surface through faceting and shifting viewpoints, prioritizing painterly technique and form over likeness. This was not yet the near-abstraction of high Analytic Cubism but a pivotal step toward it.
- Breakthrough: The spring/summer 1909 works, especially those from Horta de Ebro (where Picasso stayed with Fernande Olivier), represent a key transition. Picasso moved from the more volumetric, Cézannesque forms of 1908 to sharper, angular faceting and interlocking planes. This "Horta style" unified portraits, landscapes, and still lifes under a consistent structural approach, laying groundwork for Analytic Cubism's dissection of form. It also directly inspired Picasso's first Cubist sculpture (Head of Fernande, 1909) upon his return to Paris, showing that form transcended medium.
Arlequin (Buste) (oil on canvas, 73 × 60.3 cm, signed on the reverse) depicts a bust of Harlequin emerging from cascading three-dimensional geometric forms. Executed in spring 1909 (likely in Paris before the Spain trip), it sits at a transitional moment: post-Les Demoiselles and early experiments, but pre-full Analytic fragmentation. The Harlequin figure appears poised on the threshold of Cubism, with geometric structuring beginning to assert itself over more traditional modeling.
By summer 1909 in the remote village of Horta de Ebro (accessible only by mule), Picasso produced a series of portraits of his partner Fernande Olivier. Femme assise (Fernande) (oil on canvas, 81 × 65 cm) belongs to the second group of these Horta portraits. It features highly geometricized, broken-down forms with blade-like edges, angular interlocking planes, an elongated neck, pronounced eyebrows, and a "reversible cube" forehead (readable as both protruding and receding). A stylized vase of flowers appears to the side. Compared to earlier, softer Horta works, this piece shows harder-edged faceting and more stylized backgrounds, advancing the deconstruction of the figure into structural components. The series as a whole marked the arrival of Analytic Cubism by treating the sitter as a motif for formal exploration rather than portraiture.
This evolution illustrates Picasso's rapid development: from the spring bust's emerging geometry applied to a familiar motif (Harlequin) to the summer's more radical, sculptural faceting in the Fernande series, where form becomes the true subject.
Major Artworks in/Related to the Harlequin Series Around This Period
Picasso's Harlequin depictions span phases, but in the early Cubist context (1908–1912), they are less a formal "series" than recurring explorations:
- Arlequin (Buste) (1909) — transitional geometric portrait.
- Later Synthetic or post-Analytic examples include Harlequin (1915, MoMA; elongated figure with diamond costume, blending Cubist abstraction and classical elements amid personal grief) and works like Three Musicians (1921), where Harlequin often represents Picasso himself. The 1909 Horta Fernande portraits (including Femme assise) are more central to Analytic breakthrough than strict Harlequin pieces.
Early Cubist works, including 1909 experiments, faced significant resistance. Critics and the public often mocked them as incomprehensible "little cubes" or chaotic (e.g., reactions at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants). The fragmented forms challenged conventional viewing, appearing discomforting or revolutionary. Dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler supported the movement, but broader acceptance grew slowly. By the 1920s–1930s, with retrospectives like MoMA's 1939 "Picasso: Forty Years of His Art," Cubism gained recognition as a foundational modern movement. The Harlequin motif added emotional or theatrical layers that some critics appreciated amid the formalism.
Legacy
Picasso's Analytic Cubism, exemplified in these 1909 transitions, revolutionized representation and influenced countless 20th-century movements (Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism, and beyond). The Harlequin motif underscores Picasso's lifelong themes of identity and performance. These works paved the way for high Analytic (near-abstraction) and then Synthetic Cubism (collage, brighter colors, simpler shapes). Today, they are seen as pivotal in dismantling illusionism and emphasizing the artwork as an autonomous object. Auction records reflect their enduring value (e.g., a related 1909 Fernande portrait sold for over $63 million in 2016, a record for Cubism at the time).
The 2008 Withdrawn Sotheby's Harlequin and the 2026 Arlequin (Buste)
Yes, the Harlequin withdrawn by Sotheby's on or around November 3, 2008, is the same piece as the Arlequin (Buste) (Spring 1909) now offered in the 2026 Modern Evening Auction. It belonged to Surrealist artist Enrico Donati (who acquired it cheaply in the late 1940s) and his wife Adele. In 2008, it was estimated above $30 million but pulled for "private reasons" shortly before the sale (reportedly without a guarantee, amid competing offers). It had not been publicly exhibited for about 45 years at that time. The painting is now part of the Donati collection sale, with an estimate in the region of $40 million, highlighting its rarity as an early Cubist Harlequin portrait. It will be sold by Sotheby's on May 19, 2026, lot 11. The video is shared by the auction house.
These pieces capture Picasso at a moment of intense innovation, using familiar motifs like Harlequin or his partner to push painting toward a new structural language that defined modern art.
2
Spring 1909 Buste de Femme
2023 SOLD for $ 13.6M by Sotheby's
The achievement of the Demoiselles encouraged Picasso to explore new styles of painting. After Cézanne, he desires to promote expression and structure. Cubisme is not a style nor a school but a pioneering research, with its trials and errors.
The gouache enhances the contrasts of soft colors. A portrait of Fernande titled Buste de Femme is an example of the Cézannian fragmentation by Picasso in the early days of Cubisme.
Nevertheless the gray, ochre and green areas are not flat but made of patterns of streaks. Influenced by African masks, the facial lines are simplified without being distorted. The garment is in a similar style of blurred colors. The sitter is identified with her broad shoulders and topknot coiffure. Her frontal figure got rid of a perspective effect.
This gouache on paper 64 x 49 cm executed in the Spring of 1909 was sold for $ 13.6M by Sotheby's on November 13, 2023, lot 28.
The gouache enhances the contrasts of soft colors. A portrait of Fernande titled Buste de Femme is an example of the Cézannian fragmentation by Picasso in the early days of Cubisme.
Nevertheless the gray, ochre and green areas are not flat but made of patterns of streaks. Influenced by African masks, the facial lines are simplified without being distorted. The garment is in a similar style of blurred colors. The sitter is identified with her broad shoulders and topknot coiffure. Her frontal figure got rid of a perspective effect.
This gouache on paper 64 x 49 cm executed in the Spring of 1909 was sold for $ 13.6M by Sotheby's on November 13, 2023, lot 28.
3
Summer 1909 Femme Assise
2016 SOLD for £ 43M by Sotheby's
The painting of the Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907 masterfully demonstrates that anything is possible from the standpoint of the form. Through this single work, Picasso got rid the art of painting from realism, narrative, perspective and depth. The simplified drawing inspired by tribal art is unprecedented in European art.
The achievement of the Demoiselles encouraged Picasso to explore new styles of painting. After Cézanne, he desires to promote expression and structure. Cubism is not a style nor a school but a pioneering research, with its trials and errors.
In 1909 Pablo spends the summer with Fernande in a Catalan village named Horta, only accessible by mule track. During the same summer, Kandinsky gets himself isolated in Murnau with Gabriele. Independently of each other, these two artists become the theorists who are inventing the art of the twentieth century.
On June 21, 2016, Sotheby's sold for £ 43M a portrait of Fernande by Pablo, oil on canvas 81 x 65 cm conceived and painted in Horta, lot 8. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
The fragmentation in blocks that gave its name to Cubism offers a similar processing for the three themes tested by Pablo in Horta: portrait, landscape and still life. The outlines of the subject are visible with a little effort leading to recognize the broad face of Fernande. The colors are subject to a similar mix : we are not in front of a portrait but of an image suggesting the features of a seated woman in the warm Catalan summer.
For several of its characteristics, Cubism is a dead end. In the following years, the trend to a dull monochrome increases the difficulty of interpreting the image without offering the puzzling breakthrough of abstraction. The loss of the three-dimensional effect generates the trials of collages which will not save the Cubism.
It does not matter, because every artist can now engage his own style in an original expressive quest. From Picasso, the modern art has become multifaceted.
Grok thought :
Quote
New York Times Arts @nytimesarts Jun 23, 2016
Picasso’s ‘Femme Assise’ Sells for $63.7 Million, an Auction High for Cubism http://nyti.ms/28NHzrY
The achievement of the Demoiselles encouraged Picasso to explore new styles of painting. After Cézanne, he desires to promote expression and structure. Cubism is not a style nor a school but a pioneering research, with its trials and errors.
In 1909 Pablo spends the summer with Fernande in a Catalan village named Horta, only accessible by mule track. During the same summer, Kandinsky gets himself isolated in Murnau with Gabriele. Independently of each other, these two artists become the theorists who are inventing the art of the twentieth century.
On June 21, 2016, Sotheby's sold for £ 43M a portrait of Fernande by Pablo, oil on canvas 81 x 65 cm conceived and painted in Horta, lot 8. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
The fragmentation in blocks that gave its name to Cubism offers a similar processing for the three themes tested by Pablo in Horta: portrait, landscape and still life. The outlines of the subject are visible with a little effort leading to recognize the broad face of Fernande. The colors are subject to a similar mix : we are not in front of a portrait but of an image suggesting the features of a seated woman in the warm Catalan summer.
For several of its characteristics, Cubism is a dead end. In the following years, the trend to a dull monochrome increases the difficulty of interpreting the image without offering the puzzling breakthrough of abstraction. The loss of the three-dimensional effect generates the trials of collages which will not save the Cubism.
It does not matter, because every artist can now engage his own style in an original expressive quest. From Picasso, the modern art has become multifaceted.
Grok thought :
Quote
New York Times Arts @nytimesarts Jun 23, 2016
Picasso’s ‘Femme Assise’ Sells for $63.7 Million, an Auction High for Cubism http://nyti.ms/28NHzrY
- The 2016 Sotheby's auction of Picasso's 1909 Cubist painting "Femme Assise" fetched $63.7 million, establishing a record for any Cubist work that remains unbroken as of 2025, highlighting the scarcity of early analytic Cubism pieces in private hands.
- Depicting a seated woman through fragmented geometric forms in muted blues and ochres, the oil-on-canvas measures 81 by 60 inches and exemplifies Picasso's shift toward abstraction alongside Braque.
- The sale, part of a $151.9 million evening total, reflected booming demand for Modernist art amid post-recession market recovery, with the painting bought anonymously after competitive bidding.
Special Report
Horta influence
Picasso’s summer of 1909 in Horta de Ebro (now Horta de Sant Joan), a remote mountain village in Catalonia near the border with Aragon, was a pivotal moment in the birth of Analytic Cubism.
Picasso had first visited as a teenager in 1898–99 with his friend Manuel Pallarès, calling it a place of profound personal discovery: “Everything that I know, I learned in Horta.” The 1909 return with Fernande Olivier (May–September) was artistically transformative.
The Place and Its Visual Impact
Horta’s stark, sun-drenched landscape—angular stone houses stacked on hillsides, rocky outcrops of the Ports de Tortosa-Beseit massif, dramatic light/shadow contrasts, and terraced terrain—provided the perfect catalyst. Unlike Paris, it offered isolation for intense work and a geometry already present in nature and architecture.
Picasso produced dozens of works: landscapes, Fernande portraits, and still lifes. He worked outdoors and in a makeshift studio, pushing beyond Cézanne’s structural influence (which he and Braque were both exploring) into fuller fragmentation.
Key Works and Breakthroughs
Landscapes: Picasso broke buildings and terrain into interlocking faceted planes, shifting viewpoints, and geometric solids. Light becomes a structural element rather than atmospheric.
The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro (1909, MoMA): One of the most iconic. Houses and hills dissolve into cubic, crystalline forms that tilt and interlock, creating multiple perspectives simultaneously. This is proto-Analytic Cubism—structure over illusion.
Factory at Horta de Ebro / Brick Factory at Tortosa (1909): Sharp angular roofs, chimneys, and palms rendered as geometric blocks with Cézannesque earth tones (ochres, greens, grays). Topography is manipulated for compositional logic.
Portraits of Fernande: Over 60 works in 1909. Features are faceted into planes—cheekbones as sharp ridges, eyes as almond-shaped voids—while retaining recognizability. Examples include Woman with Pears (1909), where the head is geometric but the pears remain more naturalistic, highlighting the tension. These sculptural heads directly inspired the clay Tête de Femme (Fernande) modeled in Paris that autumn.
Artistic Innovations Sparked
Horta’s rugged clarity gave Picasso the confidence and raw material to “deconstruct” reality systematically. As one scholar notes, the village’s architecture and landscape let him treat masses as “geometric blocks” while using color for depth and structure.
The 1909 Horta summer remains one of the clearest examples of place profoundly shaping modernist revolution—rural Spain helping birth one of the 20th century’s most radical visual languages. Many of these works are highlights in collections like MoMA, the Hermitage, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Picasso had first visited as a teenager in 1898–99 with his friend Manuel Pallarès, calling it a place of profound personal discovery: “Everything that I know, I learned in Horta.” The 1909 return with Fernande Olivier (May–September) was artistically transformative.
The Place and Its Visual Impact
Horta’s stark, sun-drenched landscape—angular stone houses stacked on hillsides, rocky outcrops of the Ports de Tortosa-Beseit massif, dramatic light/shadow contrasts, and terraced terrain—provided the perfect catalyst. Unlike Paris, it offered isolation for intense work and a geometry already present in nature and architecture.
Picasso produced dozens of works: landscapes, Fernande portraits, and still lifes. He worked outdoors and in a makeshift studio, pushing beyond Cézanne’s structural influence (which he and Braque were both exploring) into fuller fragmentation.
Key Works and Breakthroughs
Landscapes: Picasso broke buildings and terrain into interlocking faceted planes, shifting viewpoints, and geometric solids. Light becomes a structural element rather than atmospheric.
The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro (1909, MoMA): One of the most iconic. Houses and hills dissolve into cubic, crystalline forms that tilt and interlock, creating multiple perspectives simultaneously. This is proto-Analytic Cubism—structure over illusion.
Factory at Horta de Ebro / Brick Factory at Tortosa (1909): Sharp angular roofs, chimneys, and palms rendered as geometric blocks with Cézannesque earth tones (ochres, greens, grays). Topography is manipulated for compositional logic.
Portraits of Fernande: Over 60 works in 1909. Features are faceted into planes—cheekbones as sharp ridges, eyes as almond-shaped voids—while retaining recognizability. Examples include Woman with Pears (1909), where the head is geometric but the pears remain more naturalistic, highlighting the tension. These sculptural heads directly inspired the clay Tête de Femme (Fernande) modeled in Paris that autumn.
Artistic Innovations Sparked
- Multi-viewpoint perspective — Forms seen from multiple angles at once.
- Faceted planes and geometric abstraction — Volumes reduced to interlocking facets; light/shadow model form sculpturally.
- Suppression of traditional depth — Flattened space with overlapping planes and subdued palette (grays, ochres, muted greens).
- Bridge to sculpture — The Horta heads’ tactile, structural quality led straight to the 1909 bronze Tête de Femme, Picasso’s first major Cubist sculpture.
Horta’s rugged clarity gave Picasso the confidence and raw material to “deconstruct” reality systematically. As one scholar notes, the village’s architecture and landscape let him treat masses as “geometric blocks” while using color for depth and structure.
The 1909 Horta summer remains one of the clearest examples of place profoundly shaping modernist revolution—rural Spain helping birth one of the 20th century’s most radical visual languages. Many of these works are highlights in collections like MoMA, the Hermitage, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
KANDINSKY
1
masterpiece
winter 1908-1909 Der blaue Berg by Kandinsky
Guggenheim
From his childhood Kandinsky was fascinated by colors. He settled in Munich in 1896 to integrate himself within the artistic avant-gardes that he will manage to regroup around him. From this first phase he is remarkably open to all the movements that escape classicism. The main themes of his personal art are the Bavarian landscapes and the rural legends of Russia.
After Cézanne and van Gogh he learns to shake the realism of the lines. After Gauguin, Matisse, the Fauvists and the post-Impressionists, he likes to exaggerate the colors and ceases to weaken them under a varnish. He follows his friend Jawlensky who was one of the first to systematically abandon the realism of colors. Attracted by mysticism, Kandinsky studies Goethe's theories on the psychological significance of colors.
Two summer stays at Murnau with Jawlensky and their companions Gabriele and Marianne are decisive for Kandinsky's career and for his role as a pioneer of modern art. In 1908 he experiments with new forms and new colors. In 1909 he revisits with blazing colors in thick layers his compositions of the previous year and prepares the theories of his new art.
Der blaue Berg is narrative. A group of riders travels in front of a mountain reduced to a triangular surface in an intense blue.
After Cézanne and van Gogh he learns to shake the realism of the lines. After Gauguin, Matisse, the Fauvists and the post-Impressionists, he likes to exaggerate the colors and ceases to weaken them under a varnish. He follows his friend Jawlensky who was one of the first to systematically abandon the realism of colors. Attracted by mysticism, Kandinsky studies Goethe's theories on the psychological significance of colors.
Two summer stays at Murnau with Jawlensky and their companions Gabriele and Marianne are decisive for Kandinsky's career and for his role as a pioneer of modern art. In 1908 he experiments with new forms and new colors. In 1909 he revisits with blazing colors in thick layers his compositions of the previous year and prepares the theories of his new art.
Der blaue Berg is narrative. A group of riders travels in front of a mountain reduced to a triangular surface in an intense blue.
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Murnau - Landschaft mit grünem Haus
2017 SOLD for £ 21M by Sotheby's
Murnau - Studie zur Landschaft mit grünem Haus is an oil on board 33 x 45 cm painted in 1908.
Satisfied with the audacity of his study with the green house Kandinsky reuses the same composition in 1909 in a larger size with more saturated pure colors. Murnau - Landschaft mit grünem Haus, oil on board 70 x 96 cm, was sold for £ 21M from a lower estimate of £ 15M by Sotheby's on June 21, 2017, lot 47.
Satisfied with the audacity of his study with the green house Kandinsky reuses the same composition in 1909 in a larger size with more saturated pure colors. Murnau - Landschaft mit grünem Haus, oil on board 70 x 96 cm, was sold for £ 21M from a lower estimate of £ 15M by Sotheby's on June 21, 2017, lot 47.
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1909 Studie für Improvisation 8
2012 SOLD for $ 23M by Christie's
In 1909, Wassily Kandinsky spent several months in Murnau, Bavaria, together with Gabriele Münter. He worked intensively on the redefinition of art, preparing his theoretical book Uber das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art).
Far from imagining that he will define the abstract art a few months later, he identifies three themes for his personal art: impressions, improvisations, compositions. He starts immediately by "improvisations", which fascinated him.
In the eight improvisations realized in Murnau in 1909, color dominates the whole work. Some riders and heroes are clearly visible, but the narration is minimized so that the colors get the top role to guide interpretation and emotion.
The notion of improvisation usually involves spontaneity. For this theorist of great complexity, this is no longer true: the pseudo-improvisations are preceded by studies in oil, as if to demonstrate that this art is the culmination of an inner process.
At this stage, by leaving much place for an interpretation by the observer, Kandinsky is a powerful predecessor of Miro. Later, at the time of abstraction, his art becomes too semantic, with a reading difficulty that can repel the public.
Studie für Improvisation 8, 98 x 70 cm, was sold for $ 23M by Christie's on November 7, 2012.
Far from imagining that he will define the abstract art a few months later, he identifies three themes for his personal art: impressions, improvisations, compositions. He starts immediately by "improvisations", which fascinated him.
In the eight improvisations realized in Murnau in 1909, color dominates the whole work. Some riders and heroes are clearly visible, but the narration is minimized so that the colors get the top role to guide interpretation and emotion.
The notion of improvisation usually involves spontaneity. For this theorist of great complexity, this is no longer true: the pseudo-improvisations are preceded by studies in oil, as if to demonstrate that this art is the culmination of an inner process.
At this stage, by leaving much place for an interpretation by the observer, Kandinsky is a powerful predecessor of Miro. Later, at the time of abstraction, his art becomes too semantic, with a reading difficulty that can repel the public.
Studie für Improvisation 8, 98 x 70 cm, was sold for $ 23M by Christie's on November 7, 2012.
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1909 Studie zu Improvisation 3
2013 SOLD for £ 13.5M by Christie's
In 1909 Studie zu Improvisation 3 was painted in strident colors. Kandinsky was a master of fauvist expressionism. His research on forms and colors were already more important to him than the theme.
A mystical rider rushes to the fortress for conquering like a Don Quixote to conquer the mystical dimension of art. The fortress does not exist in Murnau, it is already a product of the imagination of Kandinsky in his greatest year of creativity.
The rider is a crusader in a urban context too stylized to be recognizable. The strength of his huge sword and the violent colors express the glory of the artist to lead the way to a new conception of art. The landscape does not matter any more to the artist.
Studie zu Improvisation 3, oil and gouache on cardboard 45 x 65 cm, was sold by Christie's for $ 17M on November 6, 2008 and for £ 13.5M on June 18, 2013.
A mystical rider rushes to the fortress for conquering like a Don Quixote to conquer the mystical dimension of art. The fortress does not exist in Murnau, it is already a product of the imagination of Kandinsky in his greatest year of creativity.
The rider is a crusader in a urban context too stylized to be recognizable. The strength of his huge sword and the violent colors express the glory of the artist to lead the way to a new conception of art. The landscape does not matter any more to the artist.
Studie zu Improvisation 3, oil and gouache on cardboard 45 x 65 cm, was sold by Christie's for $ 17M on November 6, 2008 and for £ 13.5M on June 18, 2013.
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end 1909 Strandszene
2014 SOLD for $ 17.2M by Christie's
In Murnau in 1909, Wassily Kandinsky develops his theories on artistic creation and illustrates them in a completely new pictorial language.
The theme of 'Improvisations' is well recorded. Some images show a seer of modern art in the assault on the fortress of classicism, although Kandinsky did not himself propose such a definition. His 'Impressions' are more difficult to categorize because the artist has not assigned this title to actual artworks.
However Strandszene (beach scene), oil on board 53 x 67 cm, retroactively appears as one of the best demonstrators of the artistic revolution brought by Kandinsky's Impressions.
This painting was executed at the end of 1909, not before a preparatory drawing dated August 3 in his sketchbook. As in Improvisations, vertical references disappear and colors are violent and even threatening. Some characters are shown but the narrative aspect is absent or impossible to decode.
The non located beach is of course not Murnau which is a village in the Bavarian mountains. The long white robe of a character classifies it as an Orientalist painting. Tunisia was a favorite theme of Kandinsky when he was still a Fauvist landscape artist.
The great novelty of this composition is that it relies exclusively on a memory of impressions of the artist, without recourse of any previous work or to a photograph, thus excluding almost totally the reality of shapes.
Kandinsky probably painted it for display in a the house newly purchased in Murnau by his companion Gabriele Münter. He then kept it for nearly thirty years. Yet it is one of the earliest precursors of the release of the forms from any figurative or narrative intention that will lead to the concept of abstract art.
Strandszene was sold for $ 17.2M by Christie's on May 6, 2014. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The theme of 'Improvisations' is well recorded. Some images show a seer of modern art in the assault on the fortress of classicism, although Kandinsky did not himself propose such a definition. His 'Impressions' are more difficult to categorize because the artist has not assigned this title to actual artworks.
However Strandszene (beach scene), oil on board 53 x 67 cm, retroactively appears as one of the best demonstrators of the artistic revolution brought by Kandinsky's Impressions.
This painting was executed at the end of 1909, not before a preparatory drawing dated August 3 in his sketchbook. As in Improvisations, vertical references disappear and colors are violent and even threatening. Some characters are shown but the narrative aspect is absent or impossible to decode.
The non located beach is of course not Murnau which is a village in the Bavarian mountains. The long white robe of a character classifies it as an Orientalist painting. Tunisia was a favorite theme of Kandinsky when he was still a Fauvist landscape artist.
The great novelty of this composition is that it relies exclusively on a memory of impressions of the artist, without recourse of any previous work or to a photograph, thus excluding almost totally the reality of shapes.
Kandinsky probably painted it for display in a the house newly purchased in Murnau by his companion Gabriele Münter. He then kept it for nearly thirty years. Yet it is one of the earliest precursors of the release of the forms from any figurative or narrative intention that will lead to the concept of abstract art.
Strandszene was sold for $ 17.2M by Christie's on May 6, 2014. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
1909 L'Amazone by Modigliani
2013 SOLD for $ 26M by Sotheby's
Modigliani, installed at the Bateau Lavoir since 1906, is a sculptor, at once close to the avant-garde style of Brancusi. A prolific drawing artist, he produced many studies and sketches.
He also knows to be a painter, with a severe and uncompromising style inspired by Picasso in the following of the portrait of Gertrude Stein. His patron Paul Alexandre invited him in 1909 to paint the portrait of the young baronne de Hasse de Villers.
It is a real challenge for the young artist. Perfectionist, he is constantly reworking the line and the colors. Alcohol does not help his decisions. The Baroness is haughty and hurried, and no longer accepts the long sittings required by the young Italian immigrant.
The miracle of this painting is that it was completed. It seems that the Baroness did not recognize herself in this woman with dominant gaze and bony face in angles as sharp as a sculpture. Her horsewoman dressing and the hand firmly held on the hip are still strengthening the authoritarian attitude.
Paul Alexandre understood the power and modernism emanating from this strong image and kept this painting entitled L'Amazone in his collection for several years. This oil on canvas, 92 x 66 cm, was sold for $ 26M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Sotheby's on May 7, 2013, lot 12. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
This is a very rare example of the beginning of the period when Modigliani considered to practice painting and sculpture altogether. Later obliged to choose for reason of poor health, he was to become the most gifted painter of his time.
He also knows to be a painter, with a severe and uncompromising style inspired by Picasso in the following of the portrait of Gertrude Stein. His patron Paul Alexandre invited him in 1909 to paint the portrait of the young baronne de Hasse de Villers.
It is a real challenge for the young artist. Perfectionist, he is constantly reworking the line and the colors. Alcohol does not help his decisions. The Baroness is haughty and hurried, and no longer accepts the long sittings required by the young Italian immigrant.
The miracle of this painting is that it was completed. It seems that the Baroness did not recognize herself in this woman with dominant gaze and bony face in angles as sharp as a sculpture. Her horsewoman dressing and the hand firmly held on the hip are still strengthening the authoritarian attitude.
Paul Alexandre understood the power and modernism emanating from this strong image and kept this painting entitled L'Amazone in his collection for several years. This oil on canvas, 92 x 66 cm, was sold for $ 26M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Sotheby's on May 7, 2013, lot 12. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
This is a very rare example of the beginning of the period when Modigliani considered to practice painting and sculpture altogether. Later obliged to choose for reason of poor health, he was to become the most gifted painter of his time.
1909 Schloss Kammer am Attersee II by Klimt
1997 SOLD for £ 14.5M by Christie's
Schloss Kammer is a 17th century mansion on a peninsula in the Attersee.
Gustav Klimt spent his summer holidays in the vicinity. From 1908 to 1912 he executed five paintings in oil on canvas 110 x 110 cm of that estate, after looking through a rectangular hole in a tablet for selecting the view. Three views are taken from the lake and one features the path in the park.
Opus II, painted in 1909, is a view of buildings from the park. Mingling sunlight and night sky, it anticipates by several decades Magritte's surrealist theme of night and day. It was sold for £ 14.5M by Christie's on October 9, 1997, lot 198.
Gustav Klimt spent his summer holidays in the vicinity. From 1908 to 1912 he executed five paintings in oil on canvas 110 x 110 cm of that estate, after looking through a rectangular hole in a tablet for selecting the view. Three views are taken from the lake and one features the path in the park.
Opus II, painted in 1909, is a view of buildings from the park. Mingling sunlight and night sky, it anticipates by several decades Magritte's surrealist theme of night and day. It was sold for £ 14.5M by Christie's on October 9, 1997, lot 198.
1909 Im See badende Mädchen by Kirchner
2015 SOLD for $ 13.6M by Christie's
In the summer of 1909 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and his Die Brücke fellow Erich Heckel managed for the first time to live their ideal Arcadian life of full nudity in nature, followed by their girlfriends and by models. That blissful experience was made at Moritzburg, a rural town with unfrequented lakes in the vicinity of Dresden.
Im See badende Mädchen features three young women in the nude. The pretty female standing in the forefront displays her tanned back and buttocks while her turned head reveals a proudly appealing gaze. The two other, one seated and one bathing, do not care with the artist friend out of field. Their green bodies are highlighted with flaming strokes of orange, yellow and red.
This oil in canvas 91 x 120 cm was misdated 1907 by the artist, desiring to deny a possible influence from the colors of the French Fauvistes exhibited at the beginning of 1909 by Cassirer in Berlin.
It was sold for $ 13.6M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on November 9, 2015, lot 3A. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
Kirchner and his group had a similar summer time with no cloth at Moritzburg in the next two years.
Im See badende Mädchen features three young women in the nude. The pretty female standing in the forefront displays her tanned back and buttocks while her turned head reveals a proudly appealing gaze. The two other, one seated and one bathing, do not care with the artist friend out of field. Their green bodies are highlighted with flaming strokes of orange, yellow and red.
This oil in canvas 91 x 120 cm was misdated 1907 by the artist, desiring to deny a possible influence from the colors of the French Fauvistes exhibited at the beginning of 1909 by Cassirer in Berlin.
It was sold for $ 13.6M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on November 9, 2015, lot 3A. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
Kirchner and his group had a similar summer time with no cloth at Moritzburg in the next two years.
1909 Portrait des Malers Anton Peschka by Schiele
2001 SOLD for £ 7.7M by Sotheby's
Anton Peschka and his younger fellow Egon Schiele were students at the Akademie des Bildenden Künste Wien. Nevertheless Schiele is a rebel. Leaving that ultra-conservative Academy at 19 year old in 1909, he endeavors to promote a new art by founding a Neukunstgruppe under the benevolent influence of Klimt.
Portrait des Malers Anton Peschka was executed by Schiele in that key year in oil and metal paint on a nearly square canvas 110 x 100 cm.
The style is decidedly expressionist. In a bold composition, the sitter is represented in profile in a large armchair. Neutral tones in gray and brown surround the sharpness of the head. The texture of the chair is made of small colored blocks, possibly in imitation of Klimt.
This very early artwork by Schiele was sold for £ 7.7M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2001, lot 19. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
In 1914 Peschka marries Schiele's beloved sister Gerti.
Portrait des Malers Anton Peschka was executed by Schiele in that key year in oil and metal paint on a nearly square canvas 110 x 100 cm.
The style is decidedly expressionist. In a bold composition, the sitter is represented in profile in a large armchair. Neutral tones in gray and brown surround the sharpness of the head. The texture of the chair is made of small colored blocks, possibly in imitation of Klimt.
This very early artwork by Schiele was sold for £ 7.7M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2001, lot 19. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
In 1914 Peschka marries Schiele's beloved sister Gerti.
