Pau de Gósol: a Cézannian atmosphere and a primitive everyday life. Pablo becomes Pau.

When Picasso arrived in Gósol towards the end of May 1906,[1] he still retained some attachments as a painter to the nineteenth-century tradition; when he left, just eight weeks later,[2] he took the threads of modern art rolled up in his canvases. There was no miracle and no bewitching, but rather a giddy interior journey, an almost unimaginable space of pure sublimity and people with fascinating features of ancestral beauty, an extremely austere way of life, and rustic manners.

In this little Catalan town[3] nestled in the southern slopes of the Pyrenees, Picasso, who was twenty-four, renamed himself el Pau de Gósol[4] (“Pau of Gósol”, Pau being the Catalan equivalent of Pablo). His signature in a letter to sculptor Enric Casanovas serves as documentary proof of this. In this letter, Picasso asked his friend to send him art tools and said goodbye with a sentence half in Catalan and half in Spanish:

“A hug from your friend Picasso called Pau from Gósol”[5]

During the eight weeks the painter stayed in Gósol, Pablo changed his name to “Pau”, like someone trying to rewrite the start of his own biography.[6] This rebirth was related, on the one hand, to the need that Picasso himself felt and, on the other, to his happiness in the town.[7] This was the main gift he received from Gósol, and this happiness was a key factor in the principal turning point of Picasso’s entire work.
 

[1] See Richardson, A life of Picasso. Vol. I, chapter 28, 433-454, especially 433-435.

[2] The publication of the letters between Picasso and Gertrude Stein modifies the traditional dating of Picasso and Fernande return from Gósol to Paris. Richardson, for example, dates it around August 12, based on their fear of an alleged outburst of typhoid fever that could have affected Josep Fondevila’s granddaughter, see: Richardson, A life of Picasso. Vol. I, 452. This departure date and its explanation due to typhoid fever is also provided in Tinterow and Stein (Eds.), Picasso, 103. However, in a letter from Picasso to Leo Stein, sent from Paris on August 11, 1906, the painter writes: “Mon cher ami Stein nous sommes ici depuis trois semaines et helas! sans fortune, notre petit heritage ayant été depensé gaîment sur les montagnes” (“My dear friend Stein we have been here for three weeks and alas! without any wealth, our small heritage was merrily spent on the mountain”), in: Laurence Madeline (Ed.), Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso. Correspondance (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 37. This dating would establish the end of the couple’s stay in Gósol around July 22 or 23, 1906, as Madeline already stresses (see page 389. These inputs would modify the dates of Richardson, as well as those of Teresa Camps and Susanna Portell (Eds.), Les cartes de l’escultor Enric Casanovas (Cerdanyola del Vallès: UAB, 2015), letters 38 and 39. On the other hand, the author of the present article has checked Gósol’s municipal archives, which show that no one died of typhoid fever in the town during those years nor the following; there is no written trace of the illness, even though Fernande Olivier speaks of it in her Souvenirs intimes as the reason of their departure. See Fernande Olivier, Souvenirs intimes (Paris: Calmann–Lévy, 1988 [1930]): 214–6), chapter V. English version: Loving Picasso. The private Journal of Fernande Olivier. Foreword and notes by Marilyn McCully (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 2001).

[3] Gósol had seven hundred inhabitants in 1906 and nowadays has two hundred.

[4] See Richardson, A life of Picasso. Vol. I, 441 and Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso i els seus amics catalans (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2006 –1971–), 248.

[5]. “Un abrazo de tu amigo Picasso [words in Spanish] dit el Pau de Gósol [final words in Catalan]”, Portell i Camps, Les cartes, letter 38. In addition, there are two other letters sent from Gósol where Picasso signs “Pau”, (see Portell i Camps, Les cartes, letters 36 and 39).

[6] See Fernande Olivier, Picasso et ses amis. Édition présentée et annotée par Hélène Klein (Pygmalion: Gérard Watelet, 2001 [1945]), 127–30. English translation: Picasso and His Friends. (New York: Appleton Century, 1965), 88–91.

[7] See Fernande Olivier, Loving Picasso: 182–5.

 

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