Pablo PICASSO FEMME ALLONGEE, 1938 In the «Matisse-Picasso»* exhibit catalogue, Isabelle Monod-Fontaine contributes a chapter entitled «Le désir de la ligne» (the desire for line). Here she examines drawings produced by both artists from 1936 to 1940. Picasso's Femme allongée dated 1938, presented today, is an excellent example of Isabelle Monod-Fontaine's description of the period. She writes: «By the end of the 1930's, Matisse and Picasso are both well past middle age. Picasso is rising sixty, while Matisse has almost reached his seventieth birthday. In drawings from 1936-1940, signs of feelings, traces of emotion - wary of virtuosity or disquieted by the absence of desire - are more evident in the drawings even than in paintings as both artists continue their exploration of that timeless theme, the feminine nude. Models follow each other in a bewildering succession as the artists weary of them, but the various media - here principally charcoal, stump, and pencil, but also wash in India ink, additions in gouache or watercolor - also change daily as they labor to generate shadow and light, giving body to the sheet of paper... The extraordinary energy of the pen-strokes and authority of line in Femme allongée perfectly illustrate the above text. Picasso's exceptional exuberance and vitality convey the young woman's body with multifaceted vitality. The painter starts from her body, her gaze, and examines both from every angle - face forward and profile, above and below. Her face divides in two, and a generous stomach and breasts, masculine thighs, large feet display themselves below. Nothing belongs to the same person, yet she remains a unified organism. With his incisive line, short or long, hatched or gestural, Picasso gives birth to a woman's body, born of desire and pleasure in wielding ink. An overview of the many nude drawings by Picasso from the same period reveals an incredible variety. «The desire for line» - an expression first coined by Matisse - draws him on in his exploration of the rich potential of other media such as watercolor, gouache, ink wash, or drawing in its simplest form. Expressed as a natural human shape in Femme allongée - or reinvented in works such as La fermière nue allongée dated 1938 (fig. 1), where the distorted nude can be seen as both a reclining and standing figure - women, drawn from life or from memory, remained Picasso's muses to the end of his life. See continuation