Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Málaga, 1881 – Mougins, France, 1973).
“Piero Crommelynck with His Wife and Daughter, in the Studio. II,” 1968.
Etching and aquatint on Rives paper, print no. 39/50.
Signed in the lower right corner and numbered in pencil.
Published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris, in 1981.
Printed by Piero Crommelynck.
Bibliography: Georges Bloch, Pablo Picasso. Catalogue de l’œuvre gravé et lithographié, no. 1856; Brigitte Baer, Picasso peintre-graveur, no. 1846.
Measurements: 22.8 x 32.5 cm (print); 37.5 x 47.5 cm (paper).

This print belongs to Picasso’s intense final period of printmaking and is of particular interest because it depicts Piero Crommelynck—one of his principal printers and collaborators—accompanied by his wife and daughter in the studio. Dated October 24, 1968, the composition contrasts delicate line work with a large area of dark aquatint, against which the figures appear to be drawn in negative. On the right, the network of lines surrounding the press introduces an almost luminous vibrancy and transforms the workspace itself into the focal point. The edition, of fifty copies, was later published by the Galerie Louise Leiris in 1981; other copies of the same edition are documented with a printed signature rather than a handwritten one.

Crommelynck maintained a close collaboration with Picasso during his final years, working alongside him in Mougins during one of the most prolific periods of his printmaking career. The motif of the artist and the studio was a recurring one at the time, but here Picasso replaces the usual depiction of the painter and his model with a scene directly linked to his own creative process and to the person who made a large part of his prints technically possible. A copy of this composition, identified as MPB 112.639, is part of the collection of the Museu Picasso in Barcelona; the museum also holds the first version of the motif.