Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkARTIST Picasso
TITLE 'Femme Assise Dans un Fauteuil'
AUCTION HOUSE Sotheby's
ESTIMATE $20 million to $30 million
Estate property is especially desirable in part because it has generally been off the market for years and comes with reasonable estimates. This canvas, from 1941, is one of 17 works being sold on Wednesday from the estate of Theodore J. Forstmann, the New York financier who died in November. Painted in the early years of World War II, the distorted figure of Dora Maar, Picasso’s muse and lover, posed in a chair is one of scores of seated women whom he depicted. “The anguish of the war and his relationship with Dora, which was deteriorating, is reflected in these paintings,” said John Richardson, the Picasso biographer. “He painted Dora in such an angular way, she almost looks like a pair of scissors.”
The painting was made the same year as Picasso’s “Dora Maar With Cat,” a far more dramatic canvas with a black cat perched on Maar’s shoulder that sold for $95.2 million at Sotheby’s in 2006.
Mr. Forstmann bought the painting in 2001 from the Acquavella Galleries in New York.
