Picasso´s work: The Women of Algiers, 1955

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Óleo sobre lienzo, 114 × 146.4 cm. Colección Privada. © Sucesión Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023
Pablo Picasso, Les femmes d'Alger (Version 'O’), 1955
Óleo sobre lienzo, 114 × 146.4 cm. Colección Privada.
© Sucesión Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023

Les Femmes d'Alger are a series of works, classified from A to O, which were produced by Pablo Picasso between 1954 and 1955.

As noted by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin for the exhibition of Picasso & Les Femmes d'Alger (21.05.2021 to 29.08.2021), this series of 15 works, and the 100 sketches and etchings he made previously, are inspired by the work Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement by the painter Eugène Delacroix. In his series, Picasso makes a variation on the original composition and an anatomical decomposition of the figures.

These 15 paintings show the artist's ability to express himself in different pictorial languages: some paintings have soft curves and vibrant colours, while others remind us of his Cubist period with sharp edges and grey colours (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, n. d.).

In the book, Vivre avec Picasso (1964), Françoise Gilot wrote of her admiration for this work and for the artist:

"He had often spoken to me about doing his own version of Femmes d'Alger and had taken me to the Louvre on average once a month to study it. I asked him what he thought of Delacroix. His eyes narrowed and he said "That bastard. He's very good. 

It is thought that the creation of this series may have been motivated by the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence. In the article "Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger (1954-55) and the Algerian War of Independence", written by Amanda Beresford and published in the Journal of the Western Society for French History (2015), a study is made of the influence of the impact of this conflict on the creation of the series through various studies and articles. 

News of the outbreak of the Algerian war reached Paris through the press in early November 1954, after which date Picasso began this series on the basis of a painting, the work of Delacroix, which he knew well from his visits to the Louvre. 

Delacroix's work was created in 1834 (the year in which France imposed a colonial military regime in Algeria) and Picasso produced this series at the beginning of Algeria's quest for independence: both artists mark the beginning and the end of the colonial occupation. We do not know whether Picasso wanted to allude to the Algerian war of independence, but there are indications that point in that direction. The artist, through his works, shows his aversion to war conflicts and his commitment by showing the suffering and consequences of these on the civilian population, as we see in his most emblematic work in this regard, Guernica. 

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