Lettre autographe multicolore signée adressée à Max Pellequer

Autograph letter by Pablo Picasso to Max Pellequer, vividly executed in multiple colours, signed and dated by the artist, 27 January 1956, addressed from his villa “La Californie”. Fourteen lines written in green, blue, pink, orange, red, violet and turquoise pencil on a watermarked “BFK Rives” sheet.
A few negligible transverse folds, as expected from mailing.

Picasso did not regularly employ colour in his correspondence. Here, however, he seems to have offered a gracious gesture to his friend and banker Max Pellequer, as the more visually striking his letters, the more sought-after they become. To speak of his work, Picasso turns to red pencil: “je continue mon travail avec ardeur” - a telling choice that conveys the fervour he wished to bring to his art.

Although Picasso maintained a substantial correspondence, letters written entirely in his own hand remain exceedingly scarce. As Laurence Madeline observes in her study of this private facet of the artist’s life: “The inertia that paralyses Picasso, who prefers his activity as an artist to that of a secretary, renders the letters he does choose to write all the more essential and touching” (“Picasso épistolier”, L’Herne, no. 106).

From his home overlooking Cannes, Picasso was assisted by his devoted secretary and childhood companion Jaume Sabartés, who penned many of the artist’s letters - except those destined for Pellequer. To him, Picasso wrote every message himself, however trivial, in a generous, flowing script, playing with letters and words as though they were graphic elements arranged in an aesthetic dialogue across the sheet, far removed from the sobriety of the text. His artistic impulse seems to have seeped into even his most routine, administrative exchanges with his banker and impassioned collector.

Part of the Picasso-Pellequer correspondence is held today by the Musée national Picasso in Paris.

A singular recipient

Max Pellequer, banker and collector, was introduced to Pablo Picasso in 1914 by his uncle by marriage, André Level. He quickly emerged as one of the artist’s foremost collectors and, in time, became Picasso’s financial adviser for over three decades.

Pellequer’s engagement with Picasso’s oeuvre began in the 1910s, notably through a bronze jester acquired from Ambroise Vollard.

During the 1930s and 1940s, he became Picasso’s personal banker, safeguarding the artist’s wealth and facilitating his comfortable establishment in the South of France. Their friendship was lifelong and intensely collaborative. Among other commissions, Picasso executed a splendid copper ex-libris for Pellequer; Pellequer purchased paintings such as Cézanne’s La mer à L’Estaque [Musée Picasso, Paris]; and Picasso reciprocated with gifts of several works. A discerning and avid collector, Pellequer assembled one of the finest collections of modern masterworks - Degas, Dufy, Gauguin, Léger, Matisse, Miró, Modigliani, and Utrillo - today preserved in major international museums.

The “epistolary art” of Picasso

Picasso’s correspondence served as an outlet for his relentless creative energy, expressed across ceramics, sculpture, photography, illustrations, collages, and poetry. Every letter provided a space for the emergence of genius, irrespective of the prosaic content of his exchanges with Pellequer. To counterbalance such banality, Picasso took care to arrange his letters diagonally across the page, enlivening them with colour from pastels, felt pens, or coloured pencils. Letters, numerals, words, and sentences became visual and musical elements, animated by the painter’s imaginative force.

A striking and vividly visual illustration of Picasso’s imperative for total self-expression, manifested through his correspondence with one of his closest friends and advisers.