Pablo Ruiz Picasso

PABLO RUIZ PICASSO (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, France, 1973).
"El Cerrado Victoria", Malaga, 1896.
Oil on canvas. Relined 50-60 years ago.
Apocryphal signature in the lower left corner.
Attached is a certificate issued by Palau y Fabre. It relates the work under auction to other landscapes by the master, now in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona (ref. MPB.110.008, 110.081, 110.077, 110.225, 110.222, 110.174, 110.150, 110.158, 110.186, 110.163, 110.138, 110.142, 110.192 and others).
Provenance:
- Pablo Ruiz Picasso.
- Emilio Ocón, landscape painter and close friend of Picasso's father, possible teacher of his son.
- The previous owner bought a villa from the Ocón family in the 1960s, near Málaga, where the work was located.
- The current owner bought it in 2010.
Measurements: 36,7 x 51,4 cm.
Malaga was not only a key city for Picasso on a personal level (he was born there and lived his early years, until he moved to La Coruña in 1891 for family reasons - his father, after his dismissal as curator of the Museum of Fine Arts of Malaga, he obtained a teaching position at the School of Fine Arts), but it also constituted a defining stage at the pictorial level. Malaga was a source of inspiration for the teacher, who grew up in its streets, met its locals and visited its most remote places. Although he lived in his hometown for a few years -barely ten-, the maestro's Malaga roots can be seen in his personality, as well as in his concepts and ideas; also in his work, since in his childhood topics such as bullfighting, pigeons or the Mediterranean were outlined.
In "El Cerrado Victoria", made during one of the aforementioned summers, Picasso represents a wall with a large laundry or drinking trough in the foreground, which occupies a large part of the composition, and a mountain as a backdrop. It is a farmhouse nestled in the bowels of the Málaga mountains, located 15 km from the capital, belonging to the estate of the same name, which Picasso met as it was next to the property of his godparents. It is a very interesting canvas, due to the fact that it is a subject little cultivated by the master, which can well be related to other paintings housed in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona (ref. MPB.110.081, 110.077, 110.225, 110.222, 110.174, 110.150, 110.158, 110.186, 110.163, 110.138, 110.142 and 110.192 and others such as 110.008, also published in the book "Picasso. Landscapes 1890-1912", edited by the Picasso Museum and Barcelona City Council). It is worth mentioning how this painting, the work of a 15- or 16-year-old teenager, can achieve such superb skill and freedom.
"El Cerrado Victoria" enjoys a very special provenance: at first it was given as a gift by Picasso himself to Emilio Ocón y Rivas, a landscape painter and close friend of his father who is believed to have been his teacher, to whom he possibly gave it for Christmas (it is known that painters used to give paintings as family presents). Later it was acquired by an antique dealer, who bought a villa from the Ocón family in the 1960s, near Malaga, next to the sea. This villa, where the painter had had his studio, contained various paintings inside, among them the one that we are now bidding for, and it was the place where the antique dealer set up his business (Marcos Zapata street). Years later, in 2010, it was acquired by the current owner.
Creator of cubism together with Braque, Picasso was a turning point in the history of art. He began his studies in 1895, at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and just two years later he held his first solo show, at the "Els Quatre Gats" café. After several short stays in Paris, Picasso settled permanently in the French capital in 1904. Definitive international recognition came in 1939, as a result of the retrospective dedicated to him by the MOMA in New York. During the following decades, anthological exhibitions will be dedicated to him all over the world, in Rome, Milan, Paris, Cologne and New York, among many other cities.