Brassaï

In 1932 the publisher Tériade asked Brassaï to photograph some sculpture by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). The commission led to a lifelong friendship
between the men. This photograph is from a later session, when in 1939 Life magazine commissioned Brassaï to make a series of photographs of Picasso on the occasion of his large retrospective exhibition opening at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Brassaï recalled their photo sessions:

The danger of bombings seemed to have been averted for a time. The city was beginning to look more normal in the daytime. . . . I wanted to photograph him in his new studio, which he was not yet living in, and in the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Près, where he had been a regular for five years. . . . I took a few photos of Picasso having lunch at the Brasserie Lipp. . . .I also took some of him seated next to the enormous potbelly stove with its long flue pipe, bought from a collector. . . . He is delighted by the portrait of him with his extraordinary stove, a portrait that later appeared in Life. (Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 53–55.)