Picasso experimented with printmaking throughout his lifet.mes , ceaselessly pushing the boundaries of etching and drypoint, as well as the painterly techniques of lithography and monotype. It wasn’t until the 1950s, however, that he turned to linoleum cut printing with guidance from Vallauris-based master printer Hidalgo Arnéra. Far from his Parisian printing presses, Picasso initially explored the relief method in 1952 to create posters advertising his own ceramic exhibitions and Southern France’s local bullfights. Six years later, he fully embraced the medium to tackle the enormous challenge of re-imagining and modernising Lucas Cranach the Younger’s Portrait of a Young Girl (1564) on paper.

According to his art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, “One of Picasso’s notable characteristics was his need to transform existing works of art, to compose ‘variations on a theme’, as it were. His point of departure was often simply a reproduction in a book; or even a postcard sent by myself, such as Cranach the Younger’s Portrait of a Woman in Vienna [housed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum], which became his first linocut in colour... This need to transform was certainly an important characteristic of Picasso’s genius.”[1] The resulting linoleum cut, inspired by Kahnweiler’s postcard, is a technical and stylistic masterpiece. Picasso’s first trial proof for this subject, completed in July of 1958, comprised only two colours. From there, he arduously re-worked the composition, ultimately creating five separate colour-blocks in ochre, yellow, blue, red, and black, which he superimposed in various amalgamations before settling on this final colour combination (see Lot 117).

The present impression, which boasts vibrant colours, is one of only a few trial proofs which incorporated all five pigments before the final numbered edition was published by Galerie Louise Leiris. Signed by Jacqueline Roque-Picasso on the reverse, this proof is affectionately dedicated ‘Pour Werner/Son amie’. Upon close inspection of this print, one can appreciate the three-dimensionality and depth rendered by the complex layering of the inked linoleum blocks. According to Arnéra, Picasso enjoyed this laborious process, “With linocutting like everything else, there was no going back for Picasso. He took a sort of aggressive pleasure in encountering difficulties, overcoming them and winning the battle. Difficulties often turned out to be a field for experiment or landmarks for new departures. His expression would in turn darken, then brighten and grow dark again. He always tried to explore the possibilities of a technique to the utmost as his skill grew in manipulating a tool.”[2]

Though Picasso may have relished perfecting his version of Portrait of a Young Girl, the painstaking process of gouging, cutting, inking, and registering separate colour blocks proved to be too arduous. Following the completion of this portrait, in 1959, Picasso invented what is now known as the “reduction” technique, wherein multiple colour planes are incorporated on a single linoleum block. Ultimately, creating this radical re-interpretation of an Old Master painting encouraged Picasso to break more barriers and develop a new approach to the well-established artform of printmaking.

[1] Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, ‘Introduction: A Free Man’, in Roland Penrose and John Golding, Picasso 1881/1973, London 1973, pp. 8-9.

[2] Hidalgo Arnéra as quoted in The Picasso Project, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Sculpture/The Complete Linoleum Cuts, San Francisco 2012, p. xxi.