Lot 135 Dα

Jules Pascin's interest as an artist was in images of the figure, and he created diverse variations on the motif of the erotic nude in particular. His work's distinctive strength lies in the candid mood of the moment, which he was able to capture in a nearly unrivalled manner in his quick sketches and highly atmospheric paintings - as in the case of our large-format double portrait.
The son of Sephardic Jewish parents, he was born as Julius Mordecai Pinkas in the Bulgarian town of Vidin in 1885, and he subsequently spent a large part of his childhood in Bucharest. Pascin studied in Vienna and then, between 1902 and 1905, he lived in Budapest, Munich, Vienna and Berlin, where he quickly established a broad network of artistic connections - among other things, as a member of the Secession. Shortly thereafter he moved to Paris, which would remain the centre of his life despite the time he spent in Brussels and the US.
At the beginning of the 1920s, at the latest, Jules Pascin was among the most important artists of Montparnasse: his paintings and drawings were celebrated by the public. His works were included at the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne and at the Armory Show in New York, and they were exhibited by Berthe Weill, Georges Bernheim, Pierre Loeb and Alfred Flechtheim. Pascin's parties and soirées were legendary and even found their way into Ernest Hemingway's memoir “A Moveable Feast”.