Pablo Picasso: Portraits
Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) was one of the most prolific printmakers of the twentieth century, exploring with curiosity and zeal the depths to which he could push the medium to define and shape his images. He would use printed images to work through ideas, changing the traditional way of doing things, to obtain the results he desired. Picasso exploited to the extreme an advantage offered by printmaking which was the preservation of ‘states’. Having used photography to record stages of completion in his work, the printed image enabled him to preserve specific states intact, fixing in time a particular sensual quality, even though many of these images were later transformed. An especially prolific period was that following the end of the World War II when he began working with the lithographic printer, Fernand Mourlot, in Paris in the winter of 1945/46. The “flatbed” printing process of lithography enabled him to achieve the painterly surface-linking interaction of form and ground that suited his new artistic intentions perfectly.
Post 1945 Picasso has been regarded as more closely orientated towards painting. Mourlot states that Picasso was tempted by the endless variations between pure white and pure black that lithography afforded. The lithograph, in particular, enables the artist to draw rapidly, lightly and with different kinds of strokes, to fill the surface in a painterly manner, to produce both a “sketch” and a “painting” at the same time. From November 1945 Picasso worked with immediate and intense focus. His first theme of this period was the face of Françoise Gilot, who he had met in May 1943.
Please view the works below and contact [email protected] with all enquiries.
The dominant theme in the works of the late 1940’s are portraits of Françoise Gilot. Picasso and Gilot met when she was 21 and Picasso was over 60 years old. Their relationship lasted 10 years. Gilot, beautiful and beguiling, was to become Picasso’s favourite muse and model. Picasso used the lines and rhythms of her face as a vehicle for new expressions of form, light and emotion. Tête de Jeune Fille is a study of Françoise. The sequence of four states combines brush, tone, texture and reversed highlights to create four hauntingly striking images.
Tête de Jeune Fille (States I-IV)
Mourlot’s series of four lithographic state proofs, each on vélin d’Arches wove paper
Paper 50.0 x 40.0 cm / Image 45.0 x 37.0cm (each)
Paper 19 ¾ x 15 ¾ / 17 ¾ x 14 ½ inches (each)
State I Mourlot calls for 2 trial proofs
State II Mourlot calls for 5 artist proofs
State III Mourlot calls for 5 artist proofs and 2 trial proofs
State IV Mourlot calls for 5 artist proofs aside from the signed edition of 50
Unsigned as issued
Printed by Fernand Mourlot at L’Atelier Mourlot, Paris
Catalogue raisonné references: Mourlot 68, Bloch 423 (final state)
PROVENANCE
L’Atelier Mourlot, Paris
Waddington Graphics, London
Private Collection, Switzerland
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London
When Picasso first began working with Mourlot, he drew all his lithographs on stone in the traditional manner. However, being the prolific and obsessive artist that he was, he needed the freedom to work out of hours and in his own studio. Increasingly he began to use zinc plates, rather than limestone blocks as the substrate for his lithographs. The advantages were two-fold. He was able to double the size of his images to the larger Arches paper format of 66 x 50 cms. Secondly, the metal plates could be easily carried back and forth between his own studio and Mourlot’s print studio in the Rue de Chabrol. Thus, Picasso was able to work whenever he chose, constantly altering and developing images. Tête de Femme is a print from this time, developed on a zinc plate, which was accidentally damaged prior to editioning. Apart from two or three trial proofs, the only existing prints are the ones originally collated in the Mourlot studio archive. The print is distinctive for its quality of scale and black and white tones.
Tête de Femme, 1948
Lithograph from a zinc plate on vélin d’Arches wove paper
Paper and Image 65.2 x 50.2 cm
Paper and Image 25 5/8 x 19 ¾ inches
One of 5 artist proofs, Mourlot also calls for 1 printer’s proof and 2-3 trial proofs
No further proofs or edition were printed as the zinc plate was accidentally destroyed
Printed by Fernand Mourlot at L’Atelier Mourlot, Paris
Catalogue raisonné reference: Mourlot 122
PROVENANCE
L’Atelier Mourlot, Paris
Waddington Graphics, London
Private Collection, London
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London
Le Corsage à Carreaux, or The Check Cloth Bodice, is an ink and wash drawing transferred onto a lithographic stone. The drawing of this print was superimposed over the drawing of an earlier state of the image, but in this state accentuating the use of the black line, which from this period began to function less as an outline, and more as ornamental embellishment across the pictural plane, as can be seen in the adornment of the bodice. Consequently, each rendition of the figure has a different form expressed though this detail.
Le Corsage à Carreaux, 29th March 1949
Lithograph on vélin d’Arches wove paper
Paper and image 65.5 x 50.0 cm
Paper and image 25 3/5 x 19 3/5 inches
Edition of 50
Signed and numbered 43/50 in pencil
Printed by Fernand Mourlot at L’Atelier Mourlot, Paris
Published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Catalogue raisonné references: Mourlot 175a, Bloch 601
PROVENANCE
Waddington Graphics, London
Private Collection, London
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London
La Femme à la Fenetre was made with Roger Lacourière, with whom Picasso had worked previously, and marks a move back to intaglio from lithography. This work is arguably one of Picasso’s most iconic and important graphic works. Made in Paris on 17th May 1952, the subject is again Françoise Gilot, but this time rendered as a far more angular and dramatic composition, with Gilot’s face partially abstracted and dramatically lit. Picasso made two states of this print and from the first to the second state he refined the image, teasing out deeper and richer grey and black tones.
La Femme a la Fenêtre, 1952
Aquatint on vélin d’Arches wove paper
Paper 90.4 x 63.2 / Image 83.3 x 47.1 cm
Paper 35 ½ x 24 ¾ / Image 32 ¾ x 18 ½ inches
Edition of 50
Printed by Roger Lacourière at L’Atelier Lacourière, Paris
Published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Signed in pencil
This impression from the second (final) state, one of approximately 15 proofs aside from the numbered edition
Catalogue raisonné references: Bloch 695 Baer 891
PROVENANCE
Jan Krugier Gallery, New York
Waddington Graphics, London
Private Collection, London
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London
In 1953 Picasso met Jacqueline Roque, and as with the other important relationships in his life, Jacqueline quickly became present in all of his work. L’italienne is striking in as much as it portrays both Françoise Gilot and Jacqueline Roque. When browsing Mourlot’s studio Picasso discovered a screened photo-lithograph depicting an Italian woman that had been used to print a poster for an exhibition at the Orangerie in Paris in November 1948. Informed that the plate was unusable and excited by its possibilities, Picasso took it away and returned the next day with a modified plate ready for proofing. He had reworked the image into L’Italienne. By changing the composition of the female face, the woman begins to look like Gilot, his lover at the time, with her open, wide eyes. He then added various other characters, including the first reference to his future wife Roque, depicted bottom left, and himself, depicted top right, playing the castanets. Although the plate was prepared in January 1953, it wasn’t printed until 1955 by which time Gilot had left, and Picasso had begun living with Roque.
L’Italienne, 1953
Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper
Paper 65.8 x 50.2 cm / Image 44.7 x 35.3 cm
Paper 26 x 19 ¾ / Image 17 ½ x 14 inches
Edition of 50
Signed in pencil, an unnumbered proof aside from the numbered edition of 50
Printed by Fernand Mourlot at L’Atelier Mourlot, Paris
Published by Galerie Louise Leiris of Paris
Catalogue raisonné references: Bloch 740, Mourlot 238
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, London
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London
