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Lot Essay
'Whenever I have something to say, I have said it in a manner in which it ought to be said. Different motives require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress, but an adaptation of the idea one wants to express, and the means to express that idea.' (P. Picasso, The Arts, New York, 1923)
At the age of 78 a peculiar mixture of geographic necessity and artistic curiosity led Picasso to turn away from etching and lithography, hitherto his favorite means of graphic expression, and take up linocutting, a technique he had all but ignored. Although linocuts were to form a relatively small part of Picasso's output as a printmaker (approximately 150 images from a total exceeding 2,000), he was to produce some of his most outstanding compositions by this method, in a short burst of activity from 1958 to 1963.
Picasso left Paris with Jacqueline Rocque in 1958 and moved permanently to the South of France, dividing his time between his villa La Californie at Cannes, and the newly acquired Château de Vauvenargues, near Aix-en-Provence. Up to this point Picasso's involvement with linocutting had been rather casual. He produced a series of simple posters for the village of Vallauris above Cannes, starting with La Chèvre (Bloch 1257) in 1952. Six years later, he embraced it eagerly. Working with a young printer from Vallauris, Hidalgo Arnéra, he attacked an interpretation of Lucas Cranach the Younger's Portrait of a Young Girl. The result was astonishing, given Picasso's relative inexperience, but he found the exercise deeply frustrating because of difficulties in registering six different blocks precisely, one on top of the other. As a result of this frustration Picasso simply re-invented the technique of linocutting. Rather than use separate blocks, he printed from just one; the so-called 'reduction' method.
Before Picasso abandoned the linocut process in 1963, he produced a group of prints which has come to be known as épreuves rincées (rinsed proofs). They were made by printing the linoblock in creamy white ink, then brushing the image with Encre de Chine. Once this had dried he would rinse the print with water. Where the ink sat on top of the printed surface it would be washed away, whereas in the blank spaces the ink had been absorbed into the paper, and would therefore remain. The result was, in effect, a negative of the original composition.
At the age of 78 a peculiar mixture of geographic necessity and artistic curiosity led Picasso to turn away from etching and lithography, hitherto his favorite means of graphic expression, and take up linocutting, a technique he had all but ignored. Although linocuts were to form a relatively small part of Picasso's output as a printmaker (approximately 150 images from a total exceeding 2,000), he was to produce some of his most outstanding compositions by this method, in a short burst of activity from 1958 to 1963.
Picasso left Paris with Jacqueline Rocque in 1958 and moved permanently to the South of France, dividing his time between his villa La Californie at Cannes, and the newly acquired Château de Vauvenargues, near Aix-en-Provence. Up to this point Picasso's involvement with linocutting had been rather casual. He produced a series of simple posters for the village of Vallauris above Cannes, starting with La Chèvre (Bloch 1257) in 1952. Six years later, he embraced it eagerly. Working with a young printer from Vallauris, Hidalgo Arnéra, he attacked an interpretation of Lucas Cranach the Younger's Portrait of a Young Girl. The result was astonishing, given Picasso's relative inexperience, but he found the exercise deeply frustrating because of difficulties in registering six different blocks precisely, one on top of the other. As a result of this frustration Picasso simply re-invented the technique of linocutting. Rather than use separate blocks, he printed from just one; the so-called 'reduction' method.
Before Picasso abandoned the linocut process in 1963, he produced a group of prints which has come to be known as épreuves rincées (rinsed proofs). They were made by printing the linoblock in creamy white ink, then brushing the image with Encre de Chine. Once this had dried he would rinse the print with water. Where the ink sat on top of the printed surface it would be washed away, whereas in the blank spaces the ink had been absorbed into the paper, and would therefore remain. The result was, in effect, a negative of the original composition.