Pablo Picasso
Les femmes d'Alger (Women of Algiers), Variation N
1955
Painted in the post-World War II period, Pablo Picasso's Les femmes d’Alger employs the revolutionary Cubist pictorial language that established him as a leader of the avant-garde in the 1910s. This work is the second to last in a series of fifteen variations based on two works by the French nineteenth-century painter Eugene Delacroix, both titled Les femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement (Women of Algiers in Their Apartment), from 1834 and 1848. Delacroix's paintings portray three nude or partially dressed women sleeping, smoking, and reclining while a female servant in the background carries a teapot. Picasso's work recasts the seductive, eroticized female figures of Delacroix's Orientalist painting in the flattened, angular forms and compact, discontinuous spaces of Cubism. Here Delacroix's scene of imagined sexual invitation and passive femininity becomes one of female self-possession and confidence. [Permanent collection label, 2019]
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Artist
Pablo Picasso
(Spanish, 1881–1973)
- Title Les femmes d'Alger (Women of Algiers), Variation N
- Date 1955
- Medium Oil on canvas
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Dimensions
unframed | 45 x 57 5/8 in.
- Credit line University purchase, Steinberg Fund, 1960
- Copyright © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Object number WU 3898
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Technique
oil painting
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Work type
painting
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Theme
Empire and Settler Colonialism
The Body in Pieces
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 02/16/2024 - 04/15/2024
Pablo Picasso and Les Femmes d’Alger
Museum Berggruen, 05/07/2021 - 08/30/2021
From Picasso to Fontana: Collecting Modern and Postwar Art in the Eisendrath Years, 1960–1968
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/23/2015 - 04/19/2015
Women: Picasso, Beckmann, de Kooning
Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich, Germany), 03/30/2012 - 07/15/2012
Picasso et les Maîtres
Musée du Louvre (Paris, France), 09/29/2008 - 02/02/2009
Picasso to Pollock: H.W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art at Washington University in St. Louis
Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, Texas), 08/17/2004 - 10/24/2004
H. W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art at Washington University in St. Louis
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/30/2002 - 12/08/2002
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries (New York, New York), 03/12/2002 - 04/06/2002
Picasso Las Grandes Series y Los Maestoros del Pasado (1953–1973)
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain), 03/28/2001 - 06/18/2001
Affinity of Form: African and Modern European Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/27/1999 - 10/24/1999
Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry
Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas), 01/31/1999 - 05/02/1999
Cubism and Abstraction
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/12/1998 - 04/05/1998
Picasso und seine Sammlung (Pablo Picasso and His Personal Collection)
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung (Munich, Germany), 04/29/1998 - 08/16/1998
Abstract Expressionism: American Art in the 1950s and 1960s
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/17/1997 - 04/06/1997
A Gallery of Modern Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/09/1994 - 10/16/1994
Picasso: Die Zeit nach Guernica 1937–1973
Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany), 06/18/1993 - 08/29/1993
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung (Munich, Germany), 03/12/1993 - 06/06/1993
Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin, Germany), 12/11/1992 - 02/21/1993
Capsule of Modern Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/09/1983 - 03/06/1983
Cubists, Surrealists, and Expressionists
The Centennial Exhibition
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/15/1981 - 10/11/1981
Cubist, Expressionist, and Surrealist Paintings and Sculptures
Picasso: Two Concurrent Retrospective Exhibtions
Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, Texas), 02/08/1967 - 03/26/1967
Picasso Exhibition
Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, Texas), 01/23/1967 - 03/26/1967
Picasso: An American Tribute
Cordier-Warren Gallery (New York, New York), 04/25/1962 - 05/12/1962
Picasso: 75th Anniversary
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 05/22/1957 - 09/08/1957
Art Institute of Chicago, 10/29/1957 - 12/08/1957
Picasso: Peintures, 1900–1955
Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris, France), 06/01/1955 - 10/01/1955
Pablo Picasso
Galerie Louise Leiris (Paris, France)
1960
Paul Rosenberg and Co., New York
Inscription [UR:] Picasso [Verso ULC in black paint:] 13•2•55 [below the first 5 in a lighter hand:] K
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