Pablo Picasso Made Fascinating Hypnotic Prints
Early Picasso prints inspired by the world around him
Still life under the lamp, 1962 © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
Still fascinated with Pablo Picasso
Picasso was the most influential artist of the twentieth century. He was both long-living and hugely prolific, not to mention a creative genius, enough so that we are still talking about him more than fifty years after his death. So, is there anything we can still learn from his work?
Picasso made over 2,400 prints
The British Museum’s answer is a clear yes. It is estimated that Picasso made over 2,400 prints throughout his career, and the museum owns over 500.
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This exhibition, Picasso: printmaker, presents a representative sample of their collection, highlighting the different phases of his artistic journey and the subjects and muses that inspired him.
A child prodigy
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was born in Málaga, Spain. His father was a painter and an art teacher who recognised his talents at an early age. Although he attended the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona and the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, he did not graduate from either.
Instead, he self-studied the Old Masters in the Prado Museum. At nineteen, he left Spain for the centre of the art world, Paris, where he enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle among other avant-garde artists.
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Picasso’s first studio was in Montmartre, a run-down building known as the Bateau-Lavoir (the laundry boat). There, he learned printmaking techniques from other artists. As they could produce multiple impressions in limited editions, this was a valuable source of income.
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Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) was an early promoter of his works, giving him his first exhibition in Paris in 1901 and publishing his earliest prints in 1913.
Frugal Meal declared his talent to the Parisian art community
His early prints were inspired by the world around him, depicting scenes of poverty and travelling performers. The frugal meal (1904) was the first print Picasso made in Paris. It depicts a couple who appears emotionally distant from each other.
The frugal meal, 1904 © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
The large bottle contrasts with the small loaf and the empty plate, suggesting poverty and alcoholism. The etching is a realistic representation, a style he soon changes.
Dramatic inspiration of African masks
Around 1906, Picasso’s artistic style dramatically changed. Inspired by non-Western art, particularly African and Oceanic masks and statues, his paintings began to incorporate semi-abstract figures with mask-like faces.
Along with French artist Georges Braque (1882-1963), they pioneered Cubism, an art form that plays with space and viewpoint, presenting visual information in a single frame that would normally be gathered from multiple angles.
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Picasso made few prints during the First World War (1914-18). As a Spanish citizen, he was not required to fight, so he remained in Paris. However, materials were in short supply, and his publishers, including Ambroise Vollard, were temporarily forced to cease trading.
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Picasso re-engaged with printmaking in the early 1920s.
In 1917, Picasso travelled to Italy to work with the Ballets Russes on their ballet Parade, for which he designed costumes and sets. Inspired by classical art during his time in Italy, Picasso’s style became more naturalistic.
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There, he met and married ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova (1891-1955), and they had a son, Paulo.
Young nubile muses
In 1927, the forty-five-year-old Picasso met seventeen-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909-77). They began a passionate affair. When his wife Khokhlova learned of the affair, she left him. Khokhlova and Picasso never divorced.
Picasso depicted Walter many times in paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints.
Picasso’s Vollard Suite
Between 1930 and 1937, Picasso made 100 etchings known as the Vollard Suite, named after his dealer-publisher Ambroise Vollard, who commissioned the prints. The British Museum acquired a complete set in 2012.
The same year he started on the Vollard Suite, he purchased an estate in Boisgeloup, about sixty kilometres northwest of Paris, where he set up his own sculpture studio.
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Almost half of the etchings in the Vollard Suite are set in this studio.
Faun uncovering a woman, 1936, Vollard Suite © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
These prints include images of the sculptor working, the sculptor with a model and the sculptor admiring his creations, which often resemble Walter.
Minotaur metaphor
Many Vollard Suite etchings reflect Picasso’s turbulent personal life and lust for Walter. He frequently depicts himself as a bullfighter, and at this time he begins to use the image of the Minotaur from Greek mythology.
Picasso Guernica
To the Surrealists, the creature symbolised humanity’s primal, animal instincts. It was also an alter ego for Picasso, hinting at his darkest thoughts and actions.
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Picasso was relatively apolitical until the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936. A passionate opponent of General Franco (1892-1975), Spain’s fascist leader, Picasso addressed the conflict in his painting Guernica (1937), a deeply felt response to the bombing of the Basque town by German and Italian forces.
Head of a woman no. 7. Portrait of Dora Maar, 1939 © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
The same year, Picasso began a relationship with the Surrealist photographer Dora Maar (1907-1997). Maar documented Picasso while he painted Guernica. She famously disliked Picasso’s portraits of her, describing them all as ‘lies’, including Head of a woman no. 7, Portrait of Dora Maar (1939).
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As a Spaniard, Picasso was ineligible for conscription into the French army and spent most of the Second World War (1939-45) in occupied Paris. In 1948, Picasso settled in Vallauris in the South of France with the artist Françoise Gilot (1921-2023) following the breakup of his relationship with Dora Maar. Figure (1948) is a portrait of Gilot.
Figure, 1948 © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
Gilot left Picasso in 1953, taking their two children with her. The little artist (1954) is a poignant lithograph that captures a brief visit. Picasso’s sadness is evident in his depiction of the scene. The children draw and play with downcast eyes while their mother watches over them protectively.
The little artist, 1954 © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
Picasso visited Britain in November 1950 to attend the third International Peace Congress in Sheffield, organised by the Communist Party, which he had joined in 1944. Leaping bulls (1950) is a drawing in watercolour and coloured inks from the Institute of Contemporary Arts Visitor’s Book.
Leaping bulls, 1950 © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
Picasso used a variety of printmaking techniques, each requiring a different set of skills, tools and materials and producing a different result. Picasso learned from and collaborated with some of the best printers in France.
Experimentation and Innovation
He also experimented and innovated, using unusual tools and materials to create unexpected effects. The range of marks and textures he achieved is astonishing and has inspired printmakers ever since.
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Picasso made around 200 linocuts between 1954 and 1962. He tended to work on the blocks late at night; then, in the morning, his chauffeur would take them for printing.
Curved forms and multiple colours give Pike II (1959) a sense of swirling dynamism. We can almost hear the commotion as the bullfighter thrusts his pike toward the bull.
Pike II, 1959 © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
Picasso made the Pike II linocut in Cannes, where he bought a villa in 1955. The earthy tones of caramel, terracotta, dark brown and black echo the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean.
Still life under the lamp (1962) is considered Picasso’s masterpiece in colour linocut. Working with the printer, he made it using the reduction linocut technique.
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Instead of creating a separate block for each colour, as was traditional, he used a single block and cut and printed each colour in stages. These four states show the evolution of the image, with yellow followed by red, then green and then black.
Monkey, 1936 © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
Each stage destroyed the previous state, leaving no room for error. The Museum holds a collection of linocuts that demonstrate this technique, most notably the proofs for each stage of Still Life Under the Lamp.
Picasso late period
Jacqueline Roque (1927-86) met Picasso in 1953 while working as a sales assistant at the Madoura Pottery studio in Vallauris. She was twenty-seven years old, while he was seventy-two.
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Picasso made many portraits of her, and he married her in 1961. She is recognisable in his art by her distinctive large eyes. She remained his partner for the last twenty years of his life.
Tree in the storm, with flight towards a church, 1968, 347 Suite © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024
In 1968, at age 86, Picasso produced 347 etchings, drypoints, and aquatints in under seven months. Together, they became known as the 347 Suite.
Picasso worked with a print studio close to his home in Mougins, near Cannes. Freewheeling in nature, the prints pick up recurring themes, including the circus, the bullfight and the brothel and reference many of Picasso’s art heroes.
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Due to old age and ill health, Picasso became increasingly isolated. Printmaking filled his days and allowed him to continue his creative adventures.
Picasso, his work and his audience, 1968, Suite 347 © Succession Picasso
The entire 347 Suite was generously gifted to the British Museum in 2014 by Hamish Parker.
Picasso, his work and his audience, from the 347 Suite, 16–22 March 1968, is the first print from the 347 Suite. Set in a circus, it includes a self-portrait with wispy hair and wrinkles. Many sets of eyes look out from the dark, eager for the spectacle to unfold.
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From his early years in Paris to his old age in the South of France, printmaking was an important part of Picasso’s creative output.
It became a medium for telling stories, developing ideas and exploring aspects of his own life. Endlessly inventive, Picasso produced some of the greatest prints of the twentieth century.
Text Martin Wray / Photos courtesy of The British Museum
