Brief ANS from Pablo Picasso, “Oui, Picasso, 2. Mai 1968,” written in red crayon at the bottom of a typed French-language letter addressed to the artist by Joseph Groben, a professor in Luxembourg, one page, 8.25 x 11.75, April 29, 1968. Additionally, Picasso has underlined a section of the letter, which reads (translated): “grant us permission to reproduce this work in our school book.” The full text of the letter: “Most revered master, During the new edition of the Luxembourg reading book ‘Der Brunnen,’ intended for the class of VII, we would very much like to reproduce as an illustration in the text your etching 'Les saltimbanques' (1905) in order to make known to our Luxembourg youth a work by the most prodigious artist of the 20th century. We are convinced that your engraving, thanks to its freshness and its poetry, would give enormous pleasure to our young pupils and that it would have a happy influence on the formation of their taste. This is why we are addressing you, dear teacher, to ask you to kindly grant us permission to reproduce this work in our school book. We would be happy to send you our 'Brunnen' as soon as it is published. Please accept the expression of our deep respect and our sincere gratitude.” In fine condition.
One of Picasso’s most important paintings from his early career is ‘Les Saltimbanques,’ the culmination of his Saltimbanque cycle, a series of drawings, paintings, engravings, and sculptures that Picasso focused on from late 1904 to the end of 1905. Their focus was on circus performers, such as acrobats, clowns, and harlequins, subjects typically portrayed in a certain jovial or playful manner. Picasso’s representations, however, were quite the opposite. To Picasso, these wandering saltimbanques stood for the melancholy of the neglected underclass of artistes, a kind of extended family with whom he identified. Like them, the Spanish-born Picasso was transient during his first years in Paris while striving for recognition. Eventually he found a dilapidated apartment in Montmartre, where he and his friends regularly attended the local Cirque Medrano’s performances. Picasso made many images of circus performers in 1904-1905, most of them representing couples with their babies and troupe animals, posed ‘portrait’ images, and figures at practice.’ Family of Saltimbanques is considered the masterpiece of Picasso's Rose Period, sometimes called his ‘circus period.’
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