El pintor y la modelo (The Painter and The Model)

Pablo Picasso was 83 years old in 1963, when he produced the three paintings in the El pintor y la modelo (The Painter and The Model) series, part of the Museo Reina Sofía Collection. During his long career, he utilised every pictorial resource, with his successive languages giving rise to key moments in the history of painting. In this late period, Picasso again took up the theme of El pintor y la modelo with great intensity. This was a subject depicted in his early Classicist works, and throughout his artistic production in different versions and styles. During these years, his creative process continued its compulsive development, taking the form of intensive production, with the painter completing two canvases a day. The final Picasso acknowledged the revolution in modern painting, largely created by himself, and tradition, establishing a dialogue with past masters in representing a classic theme in the history of European painting. The successive order of the series El pintor y la modelo, on which he primarily focused between 1963 and 1965, precisely dated by Picasso, makes it possible to establish a process which essentially speaks to the artist’s relationship with painting, the painter with regard to the representation of the model. Now far from Paris, having withdrawn into his studio, Picasso returned to painting about painting itself, emphasising his ability to stand firm against the dominant languages of the 1960s. He used the canvas, the picture space, as the essence of artistic practice, in an ongoing process of experimentation with the limits of painting, which is also the subject of his final works.