[PICASSO & PRÉVERT] JACQUES, Ernest

[PICASSO & PRÉVERT] JACQUES, Ernest

Vintage silver print
N.p.n.d., [Saint-Paul-de-Vence, early 1950s], 13 x 8 cm (14 x 9 cm incl. margins)
Minor surface imperfections, small stains and very slight creases, slight waviness to the lower margin
Typographical annotations in ink and pencil on the verso

Striking portrait of the two artists and friends in Saint-Paul-de-Vence

This print was taken at the home of the weaver Ernest Jules Jacques, a close friend of Prévert, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. It brings together the two friends and artists Jacques Prévert, in the foreground, and Pablo Picasso, slightly set back. The striking contrasts make the portrait all the more powerful: it captures the painter’s instantly recognisable pose, arms crossed, while the cigarette never leaves the lips of the poet, with his eternally melancholy gaze.

Prévert’s admiration for Picasso found expression at the time in the two closing poems of his collection Paroles (1946): “Promenade de Picasso” and “Lanterne magique de Picasso”, in which the poet expresses his relationship to art and the way Picasso upends reality.