Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Malaga, 1881-Mougins, 1973).
"In the theater: the abduction". 08.11.1966.
Etching on Velin paper, copy 12/50.
Signed and numbered in pencil. Dated on plate.
With Sotheby's labels on the back.
Work cataloged in the graphic collection of the Picasso Museum in Barcelona: MPB 112.596.
Measurements: 22 x 32 cm (print); 57 x 71 cm (frame).

Picasso uses here the etching with an incisive, spontaneous and expressively disordered stroke, typical of his late graphic production. The line appears nervous, quick and vibrant, creating a scene that seems to arise from an immediate impulse, almost drawn without pause. This freedom of line, without renouncing control, allows Picasso to suggest bodies, gestures and tensions without the need for anatomical precision. The style recalls his interest in theatricality, farce, scenic chaos and extreme situations, recurring themes in his engravings of the sixties. The composition combines an area of great graphic intensity, the illuminated stage, full of crisscrossing lines, with a more sober and silent space, where the audience is located. The visual contrast reinforces the sensation of spectacle and distance.

The scene shows an abduction depicted inside a theater: on stage, under a spotlight, there is a melee of intermingled arms and legs belonging to a naked woman and her assailant. Picasso reduces the bodies to open, fragmented, almost dismembered forms, emphasizing the drama, violence and confusion of the action.

In contrast, the audience, situated in the semi-darkness of the room, is depicted as simplified profiles. Their faces do not react to the drama they witness: they look on unmoved, as if they were part of a familiar theatrical ritual or a repeated scene. This opposition between the vivid drama of the stage and the distant coldness of the audience creates an ironic and critical effect, typical of Picasso's black humor.

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.