PICASSO, Pablo (1881-1973)

PICASSO, Pablo (1881-1973)

Autograph letter signed « Picasso » to Max Pellequer
[Château de] Vauvenargues, « le 24.[0]6.[19]59 », 1 p. in-8° in oil pastel
Fine condition

Affectionate letter from the master to his friend and collector Max Pellequer

« Mon cher Max,
Vous venez de partir ce matin et déjà je vous embête de nouveau (voir ma lettre des contributions que je reçois). Encore bien des amitiés de nous deux [allusion à sa compagne Jacqueline Roque qu’il épouse en 1961] pour vous deux. Picasso »

A banker and astute art lover, Max Pellequer assembled a considerable collection of modernist works in the 1920s. In 1920, he married Francine Level, niece of merchant and businessman André Level. It was through the latter that he met Picasso in 1914. This meeting marked the genesis of an unwavering friendship between the two men. Pellequer became one of the artist’s closest friends, but also his banker and financial advisor. For more than 30 years, he acquired an incredible collection of paintings and sculptures from Picasso. The epistolary relationship they maintained over the years allows us to take the measure of the links that united the two men.
Still with the precious help of his friend Max, Picasso acquired a fourteenth-century castle in 1958, in Vauvenargues, near Aix en Provence, at the foot of the Sainte-Victoire mountain. He occupied it intermittently between 1959 and 1962. On this subject, he declared to Danier-Henry Kahnweiler: “I bought Cézanne’s Sainte-Victoire. Which one? The real one.” It was in the park of this same property that the painter was buried in a deleterious atmosphere, on April 10, 1973.