Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Málaga, 1881 – Mougins, France, 1973).
“Portrait d’homme,” from the Notre Dame de Vie series. 1966.
Linocut on vellum paper, print no. 113/150.
Published by Éditions Cercle d’Art, Paris, 1966.
Printed by Arnéra, Vallauris.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
Reference bibliography: Bloch 1230; Baer 1848; Cramer 134.
Measurements: 43.5 x 38 cm; 62 x 60.5 cm (framed).

Created in 1966, *Portrait d’homme* is part of the series associated with *Notre Dame de Vie*, one of Pablo Picasso’s late graphic series. In this work, the artist employs linocut, a technique he explored intensively from the late 1950s onward and which allowed him to develop a language of great formal synthesis, based on the contrast between black masses, the light background, and the energy of the line.

The face is constructed using quick, angular, and expressive strokes, closer to a form of graphic writing than to a naturalistic depiction. Picasso reduces the facial features to a series of lines, patches, and visual rhythms that condense the subject’s character without sacrificing the humor, distortion, and inventive freedom characteristic of his late work. The date inscribed on the plate—February 16, 1966—reinforces the immediacy of the image, conceived as a sort of incisive sketch translated into the language of printmaking.

The work bears witness to Picasso’s extraordinary creative vitality in his final years, as well as his ability to renew traditional printmaking techniques. In linocut, the artist found a direct, forceful, and experimental medium, ideally suited to articulating a visual vocabulary in which the memory of drawing, the power of the mask, and the gestural intensity of the mark coexist.

Pablo Picasso is one of the key figures in 20th-century art. Trained in Málaga, A Coruña, and Barcelona, he developed a career in Paris that was decisive for the renewal of modern artistic language. Together with Georges Braque, he pioneered Cubism, and throughout his life he worked in painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking. His work is represented in major international collections, including the Musée Picasso in Paris, the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Tate in London.