Pablo Picasso, Reclining Nude and Guitarist with Hat, Linocut, 1962 for sale at Pamono

Description

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Nu couch et guitariste au chapeau (Lying Nude and Guitarist with Hat)

Colour Linocut on Vellum paper

year 1962

sheet size: 317 x 383 mm
image size: 271 x 326 mm

plate number 16 from the collection of Linocut published by Cercle d’Art editions in 1962

Great Condition: negligible signs of ages, never framed – please see pictures!
Note on condition: our artwork is complete, neither cropped nor trimmed. We insist on that because some people used to crop linocuts from these series in order to cut the small numbers lower left, for aesthetic reason: this way, the artwork loses its integrity and even most of its economic value. We are selling a complete artwork, not crippled, and we show it all – one of the pictures includes the edges. Tip: if one does not like the small number, it is easy to hide it under a passepartout when matted – just don’t trim the artwork!

This is a real linocut from the original edition dated 1962 (NOT from the lithograph/digital reprints published in 1988 and 2020)
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Picasso and Linogravure (Linocut)

Picasso’s activity on linocut is late, and certainly due to the desire to give color, having in lithographs a secondary role, a leading one in graphic creation. Thus, the artist did not intend to discover a new series of contents and forms, but to adapt his figurative world to new technical possibilities. And so, as in all of Picasso’s experiences – whether in plastic, lithography, ceramics, or aquatint – the results obtained can only be compared to Picasso’s own previous creations.
We do not know what chance event brought Picasso into contact with the unusual medium of linoleum. Just as a year earlier he had finished painting “L’Arlsienne” with dove feathers collected from the courtyard of his house “La Californie” in Cannes, rather than with a brush, the linocuts may also have had an equally casual immediate inspiration. However, in comparing the aquatints of the “Tauromachia” with the brush drawings immediately preceding the linocuts, a fundamental difference is immediately spotted. The engravings are static and two-dimensional, so much so that they sometimes create a silhouette effect. The artist then used several very different expedients to adapt his motifs to the possibilities offered by printed linocut. Although he had previously only made woodcuts, Picasso soon found himself at ease in this new field where he ventured with rapid decision and treats the docile material according to methods of extreme ductility. Linear and two-dimensional schemes are used and exhibited by numerous superimpositions of the same colour, or by repeatedly reprinting the same matrix appropriately modified. Among the various colour agreements, the ideal type prevails in the combination of ochre, brown and black inspired by the color scheme of Greek vases and which inexplicably also responds perfectly to the needs of the most modern technique.
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Picasso and the Corrida (Spanish Bullfighting)

The recurring theme in the linocuts by Picasso is the bullfight (Corrida). The revival of the bullfight in Arles and Nimes after the war stimulated in him – who remained faithful to his oath not to return to Spain – the resurfacing of old yet wonderfully precise memories. Already in the years after 1940, in full maturity, bullfight motifs had resurfaced in lithographs and painted ceramics. When from 1954 in Vallauris, a type of bullfight without the final killing of the bull became customary, and even Jacqueline Roque, who was entering the painter’s life to become Madame Picasso in 1961, showed a passion for, the dramatic events of the arena became increasingly predominant. Interest in the theme was further stimulated in the summer of 1957 by the assignment to illustrate a new edition of Pepe Illo’s classic Tauromachia. The world of the bullring, to which Picasso had earned his entrance ticket as a child with his first drawings, had resurfaced and imposed itself on the painter for several years. The brush-tip drawings of bullfights from 1959 onward are closely related to contemporary engravings; in some of them, in fact, brown appears as a second color. As the years went by, Picasso’s nostalgia for Spain became more and more intense. This was already demonstrated by his ever-increasing participation in bullfights and folk festivals, which the artist, as in his youth, jokingly enjoyed.
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On This Artwork

In this vividly coloured engraving, Picasso exploited the technical peculiarity of linoleum not only in an ornamental sense, but also in an expressive one. After the bullfight, the picador accompanies his beloved by playing the guitar: the artist applies the means of linoleum sparingly, and gives the image a naturalistic attitude and a subtle play of planes obtained with a brown plate roughened with a shoemaker’s rasp.