Pablo PICASSO / Signed Autograph Letter / Art / Vauvenargues / Friendship / Painter

  

Autographed letter signed "Picasso" to Max Pellequer [Château de] Vauvenargues, "the 13th. Picasso writes to his friend and advisor Max Pellequer regarding a financial project.

I am sending you the check for the tax collector of the 6th. Undoubtedly for his apartment at 7, rue des Grands Augustins in the 6th arrondissement in this letter.

I will write to you soon about our and your bank project here and in Cannes. [Jaime] Sabartés has left and is already in Paris. He will see you as soon as you return. A thousand regards from both of us to you two." A banker and discerning art lover, Max Pellequer has been amassing a considerable collection of modernist works since the 1920s.

He married Francine Level in 1920, the niece of the dealer and businessman André Level. It is through the latter that he meets Picasso in 1914. This encounter marks the genesis of an unbreakable friendship between the two men. Pellequer becomes one of the artist's closest intimates, as well as his banker and financial advisor. For over 30 years, he acquires an incredible collection of paintings and sculptures from Picasso.

The correspondence they maintained throughout these years allows us to measure the bonds that united the two men. Always with the invaluable help of his friend Max, Picasso acquired a 14th-century château in 1958, in Vauvenargues, near Aix-en-Provence, at the foot of the Sainte-Victoire mountain. He occupied it intermittently between 1959 and 1962.

Regarding this, he stated to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler: "I bought the Sainte-Victoire of Cézanne." It is in the park of this same property that the painter will be buried in a toxic atmosphere on April 10, 1973. Collection Max Pellequer then private collection.