PICASSO PABLO: (1881-1973) Spanish painter, a co-founder of the Cubist movement. A good illustrated A.L.S., Picasso, one page, 4to, Cannes, 17th January 1956, to Max [Pellequer], in French. Picasso writes a brief letter, in full, ´Oui mon cher Max, je les ai recues et 100,000 et plus de fois merci´ (Translation: ´Yes, my dear Max, I've received them 100,000 times over, thank you´). Above his message of three lines Picasso has added an original blue ink drawing in his hand, which dominates the page, and depicts a bottle of wine standing alongside a glass. A simple yet highly appealing illustrated letter on a theme which recurred in many of Picasso´s artworks during his career. Some light, minor creasing and a few small tears to the edges, not affecting the text or illustration. About VG

Max Pellequer (1903-1973) French banker and art collector who would become Picasso´s private banker, financial adviser and close friend. Pellequer assembled an important collection of artworks in the 1920s and 1930s which included a number of significant early pieces by Picasso, as well as works by Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro and others. Almost two hundred letters from Pellequer to Picasso are preserved in the Musee National Picasso in Paris.

´Picasso permanently relocated to Paris in 1904. He spent the remainder of his life and artistic career living in France……Alcohol was an important facet of French artists’ social scene and of their art. Bars, cafes, and other drinking establishments often served as meeting places and hangouts for artists of the generations immediately preceding Picasso, and it is no surprise that they frequently took these places and their wares as subjects for their works……..Picasso, like other artists living in France at the time, was the inheritor of the cultural ripples of alcohol, as well as of the visual themes it inspired….[Picasso´s]…….1896 painting The First Communion, depicts a young woman about to receive her first communion……[this, and other]……works do not prominently feature alcohol per se, although they do reveal an important facet of Picasso’s relationship with wine: wine not only as a religious sacrament, but also as marker of identity……..For Catholic Picasso, wine was not simply a tool for worship, but must also have been a sort of divine vessel, which, through God, became something new and holy. The doctrine of transubstantiation, by which Eucharist wine becomes the blood of Christ, was and remains a defining feature of Catholicism. These works also lay a foundation for Picasso’s later exploration of wine in the very different context of ancient Greco-Roman religion……The Minotaur’s Repose: Champagne and Mistress depict a minotaur and a nude woman reclining on a couch; the minotaur looks over his shoulder towards the viewer, raising the glass of wine in his hand…….The Dionysiac characters of satyrs and maenads (depicted in Picasso’s Bacchanale) also embody the intoxicating effects of alcohol which distance drinkers from the rational mind and, in Greek myth, their humanity…….This is a very different relationship to wine than the Catholic imagery of Picasso’s earlier career evokes, but both imply significance and even a form of reverence. In Picasso’s works, wine can be both transformed and transformative´ (extracts from Picasso: Wine and Art at La Cité du Vin by Paige Crawley, 2022)