Introduction

Between February 25 and March 1, 1933, Pablo Picasso produced a series of drawings depicting standing figures made from a mixture of body parts and domestic objects. The drawings were collectively titled Une Anatomie (An Anatomy) and shortly after their completion they featured in the June 1933 inaugural issue of Minotaure. Despite appearing in this revolutionary new art magazine, the drawings received little critical attention in the intervening years and the few references that did appear invariably referred to them as evidence of Picasso’s involvement with Surrealism. Their appearance in Minotaure, the latest incarnation of two previous attempts to establish a Surrealist media presence, inevitably encouraged this viewing of them. Though hardly discussed and rarely illustrated after Minotaure their impact on twentieth-century art was significant, mainly in terms of their influence on sculptors such as Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi . 

I initially encountered the anatomy drawings in the 1980s, not via Minotaure, but via ad hoc illustrations with little or no text other than captions such as Une Anatomie : trois femmes. Picasso produced the drawings in sets of three, but Minotaure illustrated them in groups of six with a title page depicting a family on a beach denoted by the presence of a near subliminal beach hut (Figs. 1-2). On seeing more of the drawings I became intrigued by their three-dimensional clarity that displays no signs of hesitancy or the type of explorative reworking found in many of Picasso’s sketchbooks. It was as if Picasso had drawn existing sculptures and augmented their sense of reality with cast shadows. As I encountered more of them it raised questions concerning their collective identity. Clearly they were figurative, but what was their collective raison d’être? Describing them as surrealist images was a useful contextual observation, but not an adequate description of Picasso’s intention, especially since on many occasions he expressed his ambivalence towards Surrealism. Having carried out previous research that involved transcriptions from two into three-dimensions I decided to reproduce the Une Anatomie drawings in three-dimensions in order to further analyse their form, content and associated references.* The transcription process involved modelling the anatomy figures in wax and then casting them in bronze. Since bronze can take on many colours the decision to patinate them as if they were ancient bronze figures dredged from the sea, was based on the beach scene on the title page and its inevitable association with the sea (Fig.1).