Pablo Picasso @ The British Museum
07 Nov 2024 – 30 Mar 2025
Picasso Printmaker
How do you exhibit and do justice to the prolific output of the undisputed greatest artist of the 20th Century? Painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, collage; there was no art form that Picasso did not use, excel at and push the boundaries of. So the answer to the question, of how you exhibit his work and do it justice, is that you can’t. Museums and galleries, including the biggest and most prestigious, have I think, come to the same conclusion and therefore rather than attempt the impossible, they focus on one aspect of his practice. In 2020 the Royal Academy focussed on ‘Picasso and Paper’, now the British Museum concentrates on its own collection of his prints with ‘Picasso Printmaker’ and later this year Tate Modern takes the centenary of Picasso’s ‘The Three Dancers’ painting as the theme around which to exhibit other of his works.
Just as printmaking is a subset of art practice, lithography, drypoint, etching, linocut and aquatint are subsets of printmaking and Picasso experimented, mastered, developed and pushed each of these mediums.
The examples below highlight magnificent works from the different techniques he employed.
The Frugal Meal (1904) – Etching
‘The Frugal Meal’ (1904)
Poverty, hunger and alcoholism literally etched into the faces of the couple with their long emaciated limbs and faces. Etching, the process of scratching a waxed metal plate with a sharp point and then dipping it in acid. The exposed metal ‘bitten’ by the acid allows it to hold more ink for printing. The detail is remarkable. Picasso manages to depict subtle changes in light and dark through different degrees of ‘scratching’ into the plate. Produced towards the end of his blue period the frugal meal captures many of the dominant themes of that period of his work, namely poverty and destitution. This was very moving to see up close.
Still Life Under the Lamp (1962) – Linocut
Often it is quite difficult to unpick an artist’s method from the finished piece. In this case, the British Museum choose to highlight the process as if to reinforce Picasso’s mastery and vision. A linocut, is a process of carving into a sheet of lino, applying ink to it using a roller and then printing. The rollered ink covering only the parts of the lino that haven’t been carved away, in other words, the negative of the image is printed. The work consists of four layers of colour; yellow, red, green and black, applied in that order. The artistic marvel being that Picasso only uses one sheet of lino and is able to carve away unwanted lino for each subsequent colour layer. Being able to plan four layers ahead with negative imagery is truly impressive.
Yellow layer
Red layer
Yellow and red combined
Yellow and red combined layer
Green layer
Yellow, red and green combined
Yellow, red and green combined
Black layer
Still Life Under the Lamp (1962)
The Dream and Lie of Franco (plate II) (1937) – Etching and sugar aquatint
Influenced by Goya’s Disasters of War etchings, Picasso produced a scathing attack on the fascist General Franco and the horror that he unleashed on the Spanish people during Spain’s civil war. The crying woman, also present in Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica, appears here. The method of aquatint, although can be used solely on its own, here is used to produce gradated regions of grey colour. Also interesting is that Picasso makes no attempt to reverse the writing, despite knowing that it would appear back to front on the finished prints.
The Dream and Lie of Franco (plate II) (1937)
David and Bathsheba, 2nd state (1947) and 8th state (1949) – Plate Lithograph
Based on a painting by Lucas Cranach depicting the biblical story of King David lusting after Bathsheba who he sees bathing. Picasso works on these over a number of years modifying the drawing for each of the ten states he produced. Although these were drawn on zinc plates, here is my detailed eplanation on the process of lithography. Reflecting on the numerous difficulties I encountered whilst producing lithographs, these were annoyingly impressive!
David and Bathsheba, 2nd state (1947)
David and Bathsheba, 8th state (1949)
This exhibition was excellent. By restricting the scope of what it displayed solely to his prints, the viewer is able to reflect on the depth of his grasp of these techniques, the sheer quantity of work he produced and the range of subjects he explored. A true master.
Below is the British Museum’s helpful guide to the different types of printing methods on display.
