In three of the Royal Academy's exhibition rooms, the Pace Gallery of New York (presumably a commercial organisation but revealing nothing about itself) has displayed in perspex boxes some of the 175 sketchbooks which Picasso had hoarded, and which were unstudied, and in many cases entirely unknown, when he died. We admire brisk notes made of Paris night-life at the turn of the century, and then our attention is arrested by six drawings which include no topical reference at all. They represent a female nude kneeling, facing a larger, shadowy, seated figure of indeterminate sex between whose legs her head is placed. A seventh drawing shows the kneeling girl alone. The thick, rugged, but fluent black crayon outline is reminiscent of the most powerful and mysterious prints by Munch. There are eloquent back views, kneeling or crouching women, sad sexual embraces, also groups suggestive of shame and penitence, in Picasso's early paintings. How do these sketches relate to them?

LRB 20 November 1986 | PDF Download