Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Málaga, 1881 – Mougins, France, 1973)
“Au jardin: Odalisque in Slippers Wearing a Hat, with Flowers, and an Ingresque Spectator,” 1968.
Etching on paper, print no. 38/50.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
Plate 277 of the Suite 347.
Printed by Aldo and Piero Crommelynck and published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris, 1969.
References: Bloch 1756; Baer 1774 B.b.1.
It has a slight stain on the right side.
Measurements: 19.5 x 32.3 cm (print); 31.5 x 46 cm (paper); 52 x 68 cm (frame).

Dated August 14, 1968, this etching belongs to Suite 347, one of the most extensive and significant print series from Picasso’s late period. Created in Mougins during a period of extraordinary creative intensity, the series brings together figures from art history, literature, theater, and the artist’s erotic imagination, transformed through a free and deliberately anachronistic narrative.

The composition juxtaposes a reclining odalisque, dressed in slippers and an elaborate floral headdress, with a bearded spectator described in the title as “Ingresque.” Picasso thus revives the Orientalist tradition associated with Ingres, though he replaces academic idealization with a scene of direct eroticism, irony, and theatricality. The relationship between the male figure’s absorbed gaze and the woman’s emphatic physicality makes the act of contemplation the true subject of the image.

The etching alternates between very diverse graphic styles. The bodies are defined by continuous, concise lines, while the background is constructed from a dense accumulation of crisscrossing strokes. This dark surface intensifies the whiteness of the figures and lends scenic depth to the composition. The meticulous arabesque of the headdress and the flowers is a hallmark of the economy of form employed in the anatomy, revealing the freedom with which Picasso combined ornamentation and formal simplification.

Suite 347 occupies a central place in his late work due to its autobiographical, erotic, and playful reexamination of Western tradition. Picasso’s graphic work is represented in institutions such as the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in London, and the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva.