Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Malaga, 1881-Mougins, 1973).
"Piece of syrup" (The burial of the Count of Orgaz). 1939.
Drypoint engraving.
Signed with wax.
Measurements: 34.5 x 25 cm (tread); 43 x 31 cm (paper); 50 x 45.5 cm (frame).

"Trozo de almíbar" is a drypoint engraving, in which schematic post-cubist figures can be appreciated, together with a central legend written in automatic writing key. This print is part of the series of twelve Picasso engravings that illustrate the illustrated book "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz", published in 1969. This book is a tribute by Picasso to El Greco, taking the famous painting of the same name by the Cretan master and reinterpreting it through a contemporary graphic language and surrealist prose. The text accompanying the engravings was written by Picasso between 1957 and 1959, in an exercise of automatic writing, a literary technique cultivated by the surrealists to explore free association and the unconscious. The work was published by Gustavo Gili Esteve, a renowned Catalan publisher and bibliophile, with a prologue by Rafael Alberti, poet of the Generation of '27 and personal friend of Picasso. With this publication, Picasso, in dialogue with the legacy of El Greco, celebrates the creative freedom and formal experimentation that run through his entire career.

Creator of Cubism together with Braque, Picasso's painting was a turning point in the history of art. He began his studies in 1895, at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and only two years later he had his first individual exhibition, at the café "Els Quatre Gats". After several short stays in Paris, Picasso settled definitively in the French capital in 1904. The definitive international recognition will come in 1939, as a result of the retrospective that the MOMA in New York dedicates to him. During the following decades, anthological exhibitions will be dedicated to him all over the world, in Rome, Milan, Paris, Cologne and New York, among many other cities. He is represented in the most important museums around the world, such as the Metropolitan, the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London or the Reina Sofia in Madrid.