Pablo Picasso

The exhibition includes four different groups of work produced at different periods during Picasso's life.

The Vollard Suite and the 347 series are two of Picasso's most celebrated series of works. The former, completed at the behest of his publisher, dealer and friend Ambroise Vollard and the latter undertaken towards the end of his life as a monumental diary of sorts.

Lithography was the medium of choice for Picasso when he was based in Paris immediately after the Second World War. The close relationship which he developed with the printer, Fernand Mourlot, engendered a creative discourse unlike any seen before and led to works of immense skill and quality. Lithography also allowed Picasso to indulge in his fascination for developing images through a multitude of stages, as evidenced in this exhibition by the Deux Femmes Nues variations.

Having moved to the South of France in the late 1950s, Picasso was physically distanced from his intaglio and lithography collaborators in Paris and therefore turned his hand to linocuts, a number of which are included in this exhibition.