Though most widely known as a painter, Pablo Picasso was an adept and prolific printmaker who created editioned works using a variety of techniques throughout his illustrious career spanning seven decades. Picasso executed his first print as a teenager in 1899 and his last at the age of 90, in 1972, creating an oeuvre of an estimated 2,400 prints. Known to use printmaking in tandem with his painting practice to study and develop concepts that captivated him, the artist was not shy about trying various modes of printmaking. He worked most prolifically in etching—often in tandem with drypoint and aquantint—as well as lithography and linocut, and also experimented with woodcuts.
“Working on plates, Picasso surrounded himself with a meticulous intimacy and his graphic works became a kind of personal diary, where all his preferred themes are discussed: saltimbanques and comedians, eros and his muses, the painter and his model, the Old Masters, violence and peace, illustrated books, and animals.”
“Working on plates,” writes art historian and Director of Frederick Mulder Ltd Anne-Françoise Gavanon, “the artist surrounded himself with a meticulous intimacy and his graphic works became a kind of personal diary, where all his preferred themes are discussed: saltimbanques and comedians, eros and his muses, the painter and his model, the Old Masters, violence and peace, illustrated books, and animals.” Indeed, Picasso’s first earnest foray into printmaking was his Saltimbanque Suite, a series of 14 etchings made between 1904 and 1905.
Nearly 30 years after the Saltimbanque Suite, Picasso would join forces with Roger Lacourière who taught the artist sugar-lift aquatinting, which he would use while creating the Vollard Suite. Mixing sugar with a chosen medium allowed Picasso to imbue many of the suite's works with a more painterly effect, expanding his visual possibilities. Perhaps Picasso’s most recognized print series, the Vollard Suite consisted of 100 etchings made between 1930 and 1937 for Ambroise Vollard—many of the works are said to be inspired by the artist’s lover and muse Marie-Thérèse Walter.
Picasso began to work closely with printmaker Henri Deschamps of the renowned Parisian publisher Atelier Mourlot in 1945. This collaboration with Deschamps led to the creation of roughly 200 lithographs made between 1945 and 1949, and he would make another 200 in the following two decades—a large portion of these works featured his lover, the painter Françoise Gilot. Of Picasso’s fearless curiosity, Fernand Mourlot once recalled, “[Picasso] looked, he listened, did the opposite of what he’d learnt—and remarkably it worked!”
When Picasso moved to the Côte d’Azur in the 1950s, he pivoted from etching and lithography to linocut, which he learned while making posters with printer Hidalgo Arnéra. Picasso first met Arnéra several years earlier at the Nérolium, home to the Vallauris ceramics fairs. Together, they would go on to create posters for these fairs, as well as for bullfights; one of the first prints the pair collaborated on at the Imprimerie Arnéra was the 1954 Toros. Arnéra recalled of their process: “Picasso worked at night; in the morning, Marcel the chauffeur brought what he had completed to the print shop with notes added by Jacqueline Roque. I pulled the proofs and returned them to [his home] La Californie at exactly 1:30. This regular rhythm of working continued for eight years, every day, except Saturday and Sunday.”
“Picasso’s combined passion for experimentation and printmaking throughout his career has left us with some of the most memorable images of any graphic artist in history.”
Often interpreted autobiographically, Picasso’s printmaking offers an important window into the artist’s life and work, exemplifying his lifelong appetite for new techniques and his ability to adapt his predominant themes in a multitude of ways. As Calvin Brown, former Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings for the Princeton University Art Museum, put it, “Picasso’s combined passion for experimentation and printmaking throughout his career has left us with some of the most memorable images of any graphic artist in history.”
