The Three Dancers (1925)

Pablo Picasso

oil on canvas

Tate, London, Liverpool and St Ives

Classification:

Painting

Materials:

Oil, Canvas

Physical Object Description:

Inscribed: 'Picasso' bottom left (the signature was added in 1965, shortly before the picture was dispatched to England)

Dimensions:

215.3 x 142.2 (support) cm

Accession Number:

T00729

Credit:

Purchased by Tate with a special Grant-in-Aid and the Florence Fox Bequest with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery and the Contemporary Art Society, 1965

Scheme:

Co-Acquisition

Ownership history:

Purchased from the artist [the first time he sold direct to a museum; and signed by him then] by the Tate Gallery, with a Special Grant-in-Aid and the Florence Fox Bequest and with the support of the Friends of the Tate Gallery and the Contemporary Art Society, 1965

Relationship:

Tate, London, Liverpool and St Ives

Subject:

Cubism, Dance, Figure

Some 32 years after the Tate Gallery acquired its first Picasso, the early Blue Period still life of Flowers (1901) through the Contemporary Art Society, The Three Dancers (1925), was purchased, also with help from the CAS in 1965. It was the first painting of Picasso’s to be sold directly to a museum and was signed by him at the time of purchase, 40 years after it had been painted.

It is a conflation of the artist’s synthetic Cubist and neo-classical styles and evokes a personal episode in the artist’s life of his fellow Spanish artist friend Carlos Casagemas (1880-1901) who was impotent and committed suicide in Paris unable to consummate his love for their French model, known as Germaine, who Picasso himself had an affair with subsequent to his friend’s death. The left-hand frenzied dancer’s face relates to a mask from Torres Strait, New Guinea, owned by Picasso. The presence of the tall black figure behind refers to the more recent death of Ramon Pichot (1871-1925), another close Spanish artist friend, who had married Germaine in 1906, and who died suddenly in Paris on 1 March.

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