Spanish, 1881-1973
Pregnant Woman (La femme enceinte), 1950-59 Bronze, 42 3/4 x 11 3/8 x 13 1/4 in. (108.6 x 28.9 x 33.7 cm.)
Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Dallas, Texas
1983.A.07
Label Text
This image of a pregnant woman was a personal fertility figure for Picasso. Françoise Gilot, with whom Picasso had two children in the late 1940s - Claude and Paloma - relates that he made it, perhaps jokingly, as a totem to try to influence her to become pregnant again. Disappointingly for Picasso, it did not work. With both formal and symbolic inventiveness, Picasso incorporated fragments of discarded pottery vessels into the original plaster version of the sculpture, forming the rounded face, breasts, and abdomen. These forms also invoked the metaphorical connection of vessels with containment, womb, and fertility.