La femme au tambourin. 1939.
Etching and aquatint and scraper.
Signed and numbered "30/30". From an edition of 30 copies. On Arches wove paper (with watermark). 66.4 x 51.1 cm (26.1 x 20.1 in). Sheet: 76 x 56,5 cm (29,9 x 22,2 in).
Published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris 1943.

• Compelling, picturesque, and in a large format: an outstanding example of Picasso's undisputed mastery of drawing and printmaking.
• Alongside “La Minotauromachie” (1935) and “La femme qui pleure” (1937), “La femme au tambourin” (1939) is one of the artist's most important individual prints.
• From the best creative period: Made shortly after the famous painting “Guernica” (1937), which takes the emotional permeation and dissolution of human physicality to the extreme.
• Art and Eros: Captivating testimony to the intoxicating and disruptive love between Picasso and his young muse Dora Maar.
• Rarity: Most copies of this etching are museum owned and hence rarely offerd on the international auction market.
• Renowned provenance: From the collections of Geortge Bloch and Marina Picasso, the artist's granddaughter.
• Other copies are in, among others, the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, and the Berggruen Collection, Berlin.

PROVENANCE: Georges Bloch Collection (1901-1984), author of the first catalogue raisonné of prints (directly from the artist, before 1983, with the collector's stamp on the reverse).
Marina Picasso Collection, granddaughter of the artist (before 1983/84 - after 1987).
Jan Krugier Gallery, New York (after 1987, with the cut-out gallery label on the back of the frame).
Private collection, USA (probably acquired from the above, until 1998, Christie's, New York).
Private collection, Southern Germany (acquired from the above in 1998).

EXHIBITION: Brigitte Baer, Picasso the printmaker: Graphics from the Marina Picasso Collection, Dallas Museum of Art, Sep. 11-Oct. 30, 1983, The Brooklyn Museum, Nov. 23, 1983-Jan. 8, 1984, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Jan. 31-Mar. 25, 1984, The Denver Art Museum, Apr. 7-May 30, 1984, cat. no. 71, p. 115 (the present copy illustrated).

LITERATURE: Brigitte Baer, Picasso Peintre-Graveur, vol. III, Bern 1986, CR no. 646 V B a, pp. 156-161 (illustrated on p. 161, different copy).
Georges Bloch, Pablo Picasso, Catalogue de l'oeuvre gravé et lithographié 1904-1967, Bern 1968, CR no. 310, p. 92 (illustrated, different copy).
- -
Christie`s, Nineteenth and twentieth century prints, New York, April 28, 1998, cat. no. 414 (the present copy illustrated).
“She is a vision that embodies the spirit of a maenad in a sensual fleeting movement. [..] Technically speaking, the print is also a masterpiece. First, because of the economy of its means, and second, because of the solution to all the technical difficulties associated with the uniform grain and etching of such a large plate [..]."
Brigitte Baer,

“For me, she [Dora Maar] is the weeping woman [.]. For years I painted her in tormented forms, not out of sadism or pleasure, but only because I obeyed a vision [.].”
Pablo Picasso, quoted from Francoise Gilot, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 122.