Les femmes d'Alger (Women of Algiers), Variation N

Pablo Picasso

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]

Artist Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Title Les femmes d'Alger (Women of Algiers), Variation N
Date 1955
Medium Oil on canvas
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

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 (Berlin, Germany), 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

Picasso und seine Sammlung (Pablo Picasso and His Personal Collection)
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung (Munich, Germany), 04/29/1998 - 08/16/1998

Early Modern European and American Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/08/1998 - 10/12/1998

Cubism and Abstraction
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/12/1998 - 04/05/1998

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
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/15/1983 - 09/04/1983

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
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/20/1980 - 11/02/1980

Summer Selections
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/24/1979 - 08/31/1979

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)

H. W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art 2002

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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