Pablo Picasso Cubist Masterpiece Buffalo Bill will Highlight Christie's 20th Century Evening Sale in New York
17 November 2022
Buffalo Bill
Oil and sand on canvas 18¼ x 13⅛ in. (46.3 x 33.3 cm.)
Painted in Paris in spring 1911
Photo courtesy of Christie's
$10,000,000-15,000,000
Christie’s announces Pablo Picasso’s Buffalo Bill as a leading highlight of the 20th Century Evening Sale taking place at Rockefeller Center Thursday, 17 November 2022. Estimated to achieve $10 million – 15 million, Buffalo Bill carries an esteemed provenance. The painting’s first owner was the legendary art dealer of the Cubist movement, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. It comes to Christie’s from a distinguished private collection where it has remained for more than thirty years.
David Kleiweg de Zwaan, Christie’s Senior Specialist, Impressionist and Modern Art remarks: “Buffalo Bill’s daring exploration of new territory as a scout resonated with Picasso, who himself was reconnoitering new frontiers in his pioneering Cubist art. With the recent opening of the Cubism show at The Met, we are thrilled to bring this rare Cubist portrait depicting an icon of the American West to the market in our 20th Century Evening Sale in New York this November.”
Painted in 1911 during the highpoint of Analytical Cubism, Buffalo Bill is singular within Pablo Picasso’s oeuvre, standing as one of the few named male portraits that he painted in the years of pre-war Cubism. It is exemplary of the artist’s practice during this period of radical artistic experimentation, as Picasso interpreted the well-known image of Buffalo Bill, an icon of the American frontier, through his newly conceived language of deconstructed lines and forms. In it, Picasso pushed the boundaries of representation to their extreme, reducing the well-known image of the Wild West star to its essentials, whilst retaining glimpses of his signifying characteristics—such as his flamboyant goatee and famed Stetson hat.
Pablo Picasso was a great fan of the rugged frontiersman and identified with this heroic adventurer and showman. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show first toured to Paris in 1889, and returned in 1905, filling a 17,000 seat arena to capacity for months. In letters to his Cubist accomplice, Georges Braque, Picasso signed himself “ton pard,” short for the cowboy “pardner,” playfully indulging in their shared love of, as they called it, “Le Far West.”
Buffalo Bill has been in a number of important exhibitions. Picasso selected it for his landmark 1932 retrospective at the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, followed by the Kunsthaus Zurich, and it was included in the 1989-1990 exhibition Picasso and Braque, Pioneering Cubism at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The sale of Buffalo Bill coincides with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current show, Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition, open through January 2023. The exhibition is one of 40 exhibitions participating in the International Celebration Picasso 1973-2023, a worldwide initiative marking the 50th anniversary of the artist’s death and celebrating his lasting legacy.
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