Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Málaga, 1881–Mougins, France, 1973), according to.
“Blind Minotaur Led by a Little Girl, I,” from the Vollard Suite (1930–1937), third edition, 1992.
Etching on Montval laid paper.
Signature reproduced on the plate and numbered 282/300 in pencil.
Edition of 300 copies.
Measurements: 45 × 33 cm.

The image depicts the first version of “Blind Minotaur Led by a Little Girl,” part of the famous Vollard Suite. Picasso portrays the Minotaur as blind and vulnerable, led by a little girl carrying flowers, transforming the mythological monster into a figure of fragility and disorientation. This figure, a recurring motif in his work of the 1930s, was used as a symbol of contradictory forces such as desire, violence, guilt, and helplessness.

According to the British Museum’s catalog entry for this work, Picasso reused for this print a plate on which he had previously engraved *The Death of Marat*, and he obscured that composition with cross-hatching before incorporating the Minotaur scene. Traces of the artist’s cross-hatching bear witness to this process. The arch framing the scene accentuates its theatrical appearance, an element the artist would eliminate in later versions of the same theme.

This copy belongs to the facsimile edition produced in 1992 by the museum in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Therefore, it is not one of the original etchings printed in 1939, but rather an authorized posthumous reproduction, numbered and slightly smaller than the historical edition.

Pablo Picasso was one of the great innovators of 20th-century art and a key figure in Cubism and modern printmaking. His career is represented in institutions dedicated to his work, such as the Museo Picasso Málaga, the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, and the Musée National Picasso-Paris, which houses an extensive collection of the artist’s paintings, sculptures, prints, and archival materials.