Picasso 1881 - 1973
Pablo Picasso was born in Spain in 1881 and was to become the most famous, versatile, prolific and influential artist of the 20th Century. The son of a painting and drawing master, he was remarkably precocious, mastering academic draughtsmanship when still a child. By the 1920s Picasso had established himself as a world famous painter and his reputation and status continued to grow.
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It is our good fortune that Picasso had such a great love of printmaking. By the time he died in 1973 he had produced a substantial body of original etchings, lithographs and linocuts, which rank with the greatest prints of the 20th Century. While the ownership of an original painting is, for the majority of us, out of the question, his original prints made in small editions remain relatively accessible.
Producing his first etching, “The Frugal Repast”, in 1904, the artist went on to turn the medium inside out, inventing new techniques, stretching others to their limits and confounding ideas of what was thought to be possible in the studio. Over the coming decades he went on to achieve the same revolutionary success in lithography and linocut. Approaching a particular method, he would attack it furiously until he had exhausted its potential. The French lithographer Fernand Mourlot, with whom Picasso collaborated extensively, described how the artist “looked, listened, did the opposite of what he’d learnt — and remarkably it worked!”
Signed Original Aquatint, 1964
Hors Commerce aside from the edition of 20 on Japon paper, from the Sable Mouvant suite. Printed by Crommelynck in 1966. Published by Louis Broder.
Edition of 85
Paper size: 27.5 x 38cm
Framed size: 63 x 73cm
£12,450 Framed
Picasso's illustrations for Sable mouvant (Quicksand), Pierre Reverdy's last poem, depict the artist working with his model, selected from the series entitled: Peintre et modèle which Picasso worked on from 1963 to 1965. Eight out of the ten painterly aquatints depict the artist, painter or sculptor, before a female model in his studio. The work was issued as a tribute to Reverdy who died in 1960 and who had played a significant role within the group of Surrealist artists and writers including Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, André Breton and Picasso.