Art · Auction
Sotheby's Brings Picasso's Heroic Years to New York
Two of the four paintings have not been seen in public since Avignon in 1970. Sotheby's offers them in its Modern Evening Auction on 18 November.
For a long time, late Picasso was the chapter the market approached with caution. Sotheby's is now putting it centre stage. Under the title Picasso's Heroic Years: Masterpieces from a Prestigious European Family, the auction house will offer four works from the last chapter of Picasso's career in its Modern Evening Auction during The New York Sales, on 18 November 2026. Together they carry a combined estimate of $30 to 42 million.
The group is led by the monumental Femme nue et homme au fanion of 1969, estimated at $15 to 20 million. Beside it hang Couple (1970), Le Peintre et son modèle (1964) and Nu (1972).
Out of sight since Avignon
The most remarkable detail concerns the two principal paintings. Femme nue et homme au fanion and Couple have remained out of public view since 1970, when they were shown in Pablo Picasso, 1969-1970 at the Palais des Papes in Avignon. That exhibition, organised by Christian and Yvonne Zervos, gathered more than one hundred recent works and stood as a landmark affirmation of Picasso's late achievement.
The Heroic Years
The paintings of Picasso's final two decades, the period known as his Heroic Years, have undergone a significant critical reappraisal. Raw energy, gestural brushwork and a return to archetypal subjects are now widely seen as the artist's final flourish. The scholar Simonetta Fraquelli has written that the re-evaluation since his death "has highlighted its undiminished power and originality", and Sotheby's points to the lasting influence of these canvases on neo-expressionist painting from the early 1980s onward.
The auction house describes a painter who pared his language down to quick, spontaneous strokes, often on a grand scale, with a recurring cast of lovers, musketeers, painters and models. Many of these works were inspired by his last wife, Jacqueline Roque, whose presence defines the years often called "l'époque Jacqueline".
An artist working with extraordinary freedom and urgency.
Allegra Bettini, Head of Modern Art Marquee Sales, Sotheby's
Four works, four themes
Femme nue et homme au fanion, executed on 29 July 1969, unites two of Picasso's most important late motifs, the couple and the musketeer. Here the musketeer is one half of a pair of lovers, an allusion to Picasso's happiness with Jacqueline. A spear and pennant in the red and yellow of the Spanish flag stand out against an otherwise monochromatic ground, a heraldic device that likely also nods to the matador.
Couple, executed on 12 January 1970, is one of Picasso's most tender interpretations of lovers. He makes no attempt at likeness, yet the woman is understood to be Jacqueline and the man the artist himself, a pairing that recalls Rembrandt and Saskia. Estimate: $10 to 15 million.
Le Peintre et son modèle was executed between 12 and 14 November 1964. The theme appears in Picasso's work as early as 1914 and became a singular fascination from the early 1960s. A bearded painter stands at the left with brush and easel, the nude model reclines at the right, and the easel divides them. Estimate: $2.5 to 3.5 million.
Nu, executed between 1 and 3 May 1972, was again inspired by Jacqueline, whom Picasso met in 1952 at the Vallauris pottery studio. Its angular features and abstracted form recall the audacious figuration of his Surrealist years. Estimate: $2.5 to 3.5 million.
Paris first, then New York
The four works were unveiled in Paris on 19 October as part of Sotheby's international exhibition tour and are on view there until 23 October. In New York they can be seen from 7 to 17 November, before the auction on 18 November. Anyone who knows late Picasso only from reproductions has a rare chance here to stand in front of two paintings that have spent more than half a century out of sight.
