Picasso's Painting Of His Mistress On Sell For Ksh17.6 Billion

Picasso's painting "Femme à la montre" will go up for auction this autumn and is projected to bring in more than $120 million (Ksh.17.6 billion).

The 1932 oil painting will take the front stage at a two-day event at Sotheby's in New York in November when Emily Fisher Landau's collection is auctioned off.

Picasso's beloved and "golden muse," Marie-Thérèse Walter, who appeared in several of his pictures, is depicted in the piece, which measures 5114 x 38 inches (130 x 96.5 centimeters).

According to the auction house, the painting is from one of the Spanish artist's most creative years, which was the subject of a full show organized by the Musée Picasso in Paris and London's Tate Modern in 2018.

"Picasso's 'Femme à la Montre' is a masterpiece by every measure," said Julian Dawes, Sotheby's head of Impressionist & Modern Art for the Americas, in a statement announcing the sale.

It was painted in 1932—Picasso's 'annus mirabilis'—and is full of exuberant, passionate abandon while being completely considered and resolved. Its bright primary colors pop off the five-foot-tall canvas."

Picasso met Walter for the first time in Paris in 1927, when she was 17 years old, and he was still married to his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, a model.

Walter would inspire some of his most sought-after canvases, drawings, and sculptures. Picasso found it increasingly impossible to conceal his affection for Walter in his work as time passed, which was revealed during his first large-scale exhibition and eventually ended his marriage.

"Femme à la montre" was completed in August 1932, shortly after the artist's retrospective at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris closed.

Sotheby states that "the sense of release from keeping secrets about his affair seems to have spilled out onto this extraordinary canvas, in which he gives full painterly rein to new-found freedoms, drenching the painting in strong primary colors and beautiful forms, while at the same time paying careful attention to every small detail, creating a composition that is both intensely complex and deeply harmonious."