Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Málaga, 1881 – Mougins, France, 1973).
“Balzac, d’après Rodin” (Portrait of Honoré de Balzac), 1952.
Etching and drypoint on antique laid paper, print no. 38/50.
Signed in the lower right corner and numbered in pencil.
Printed by Jacques Frélaut at the Atelier Lacourière, Paris, in 1961.
Published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris.
Work belonging to the “La Caisse à Remords” edition.
Bibliography: Georges Bloch, Pablo Picasso. Catalogue de l’œuvre gravé et lithographié, no. 713; Brigitte Baer, Picasso peintre-graveur, no. 899.
Measurements: 23 x 34.7 cm (print); 35.5 x 52 cm (paper).

This print is part of “La Caisse à Remords,” one of the most unique series in Picasso’s graphic work. In 1960, the artist, together with Jacques Frélaut, reviewed a large group of old plates and selected 45 copper plates, created between 1919 and 1955, for a new edition. The fifty proofs from each plate were printed by Frélaut in 1961, but Picasso never signed them. After his death, the Galerie Louise Leiris reached an agreement with his heirs to market the prints, and in 1980 the sheets were numbered and stamped with a wet seal reproducing the artist’s signature. This work is part of that edition.

Originally engraved in 1952, the composition is a reinterpretation of Auguste Rodin’s famous monument to Honoré de Balzac. Picasso breaks down and transforms the powerful sculptural volume through an extraordinarily light drawing style, alternating barely hinted-at lines with areas of greater graphic intensity. The relationship to Rodin is not merely a reproduction here: the monumental figure becomes a subject of experimentation, subjected to the distortions and shifts in perspective characteristic of Picasso’s artistic language. The Museu Picasso in Barcelona holds another proof of this same print, cataloged as “Variation on Rodin’s Balzac” (MPB 112.680), while the Musée Picasso in Paris holds a 1952 proof cataloged as “Balzac, d’après Rodin.”

Pablo Picasso developed printmaking as an essential field of exploration throughout virtually his entire career, experimenting with etching, drypoint, engraving, lithography, and linocut, and collaborating with great master printmakers such as Roger Lacourière, Jacques Frélaut, and, later, the Crommelynck brothers. This continuous experimentation made his body of graphic work one of the most extensive and significant of the 20th century. His prints are held in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée national Picasso-Paris, and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona.