L’Aubade

1967

L'Aubade (The Dawn Serenade) from 1967 represents Picasso's late-period exploration of intimate interior scenes with bold, expressive figuration. The composition features two female figures rendered in Picasso's characteristic cubist-influenced style, with dramatic contrasts of blue, black, green, and white. One figure plays a flute while a reclining nude occupies the foreground, exemplifying the artist's enduring fascination with the classical themes of music and the female form during his final creative years.

Medium: Oil on canvas

Notes

Jeweller Laurence Graff at home with his Picasso, 'L'Aubade (The Serenade)' (1967). Life for Graff began in working-class East London in the 1950s. The son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, at the age of 15, he dropped out of school and began working in a jewellery workshop, where he scrubbed floors and cleaned tollets. After a couple of months, he moved to another workshop to learn how to make jewellery. "It was a bad time in England in those days and people didn't have much money-they would repair a ring rather than buy a new one. I learned all the ways to make something look new again." After the company he was stationed at went bankrupt, he struck out on his own at just 17 years old. By the age of 22, he had founded Graff Diamonds. Graff began collecting in the late '70s. He went to an auction and bought a small Renoir. At first, he felt nervous about the responsibility of owning it. He stuffed it in a safe, along with his diamonds. Later, he convinced himself to hang it on the wall, and began collecting Impressionist works. Initially, Graff was sceptical of contemporary art. "In the early days in New York when Andy [Warhol] was still alive, I saw him delivering Interview magazines up and down Madison Avenue. I didn't even know who he was—I just knew he was a bit of a character." Later, Philippe Ségalot, formerly of Christie's, showed Graff a painting by Warhol: 'Orange Marilyn' from 1964. Soon after, Graff acquired 'Lavender Marilyn' (also referred to as Grape Marilyn, by Warhol superfans) for $4.3 million. "That was the start of my interest in contemporary art. Although, I have to declare, prior to all of that I did make a move. I bought a Bacon. I bought 'Portrait of Lucian Freud', which I paid 700 pounds for, in London. And it was technically my first contemporary piece." The Picasso hanging behind Graff, a depiction of a flutist rhapsodically playing his instrument for his lover, was completed when Picasso was in his late eighties. The animated, flirtatious male figures that populate Picasso's late-1960s works are often understood as embodiments of the youth and vitality the artist knew were slipping away. - Via Lucas Oliver Mill for Collectorwalls

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