Peintures 1962 – 1963
Presentation copy, with a large inscription in colored pencils: “Pour mon ami Frua, son ami Picasso. Mougins, A.-M. [Alpes-Maritimes], ‘Mas N.D. de Vie’.”
The Mas Notre-Dame-de-Vie, nicknamed “the Minotaur’s lair,” was Pablo Picasso’s last home. He lived there with his wife Jacqueline Roque from 1961, after leaving his estate La Californie, in Cannes.
In March 1938, Picasso and his companion Dora Maar visited the Zervos couple at the farmhouse they had recently acquired in the hamlet of La Goulotte, in Vézelay. They were accompanied by Mary Callery, a wealthy American, and Frua de Angeli, a wealthy industrialist from Milan. In memory of this excursion to Vézelay, Picasso sketched the nude of a reclining woman, La Fermière, on a large, unfinished canvas. When war was declared, Picasso left Paris hurriedly for Royan (Charente-Maritime). Mary Callery volunteered as an ambulance driver and later left for America. Frua de Angeli returned to Milan. The Zervos couple initially stayed in Paris, attempting to bring out the second volume of the Picasso catalogue, remaining in constant contact with Picasso and keeping him informed of the whereabouts of their mutual friends and the safety of his works. They left Paris for Vézelay in 1940. After the war, Frua de Angeli, who had married Mary Callery, became one of the most remarkable Italian collectors of the twentieth century and one of the most important owners of works by Pablo Picasso: “He had more than a hundred Picassos. His study was filled with Cubist Braques and Picassos; the dining room with works by De Chirico and Carrà; the drawing room, besides a Giuseppe Maria Crespi, was decorated with two large Matisses facing each other. It was quite extraordinary,” recalls his granddaughter Francesca Valsecchi (in Monica Preti, “Le Palazzo Butera, de maison-musée à laboratoire ouvert sur la ville: entretien avec Francesca et Massimo Valsecchi,” Culture & Musées, 34 | 2019, 295–305).
Picasso probably gave this catalogue to Frua de Angeli during the summer of 1964, when the Italian collector spent a “Var summer” and stayed several nights in Mougins.
A fine copy with an interesting provenance, for one of Picasso’s most important collectors and friends.