Three Graces

Another Picasso inspired piece

Pearwood, black locust, walnut
7 x 18 x 21 inches tall
When Jeffrey was in Malaga Spain he visited the Picasso Museum, where he encountered his 1923 painting Three Graces. It’s a popular Renaissance theme. In Picasso’s version the standing women were one in profile, one face view, and one ¾ view of the face, each draped with a fabric I some way. Knowing that in his cubist work Picasso was fascinated by the juxtaposition of these poses, and that this predated that, Cooper was immediately inspired to do an interpretation, and here it is. The three figures each have a unique disposition – one sort of demure, one fully clothed, and the one on the left more bold, yet distant from the others. Taken together they make up a multifaceted whole, like all of us, and like Picasso’s later cubist figures.

Here is the Picasso original, and the rearview of the sculpture