Sold for $9,375

Provenance:
Estate of Hidalgo Arnera
Frederick Mulder, London
Private Collection, Paris
Acquired from the above by present owner

Literature:
Bloch 1092

Lot Essay:

Pablo Picasso was one of the most prolific printmakers of the 20th century.  He was a master in copper plate etching and lithography, however a smaller portion of his oeuvre consists of nearly two hundred linocuts. 

In the late 1940s, at the height of his artistic career, living mostly in the South of France, Picasso was compelled to reinvent himself.  He first turned his attention to the creation of ceramics at the Atelier Madoura in Vallauris which he promoted with linocut advertising posters.  This led to another new passion: making linocuts in color. 

For assistance in this new process, he turned to master printer Hidalgo Arnera, a fellow Spanish expatriate living in the South of France.  From 1958-1963 they collaborated together spending countless hours creating these linocuts.  The process of printing a linocut, typically requires a cutting a separate block for each color printed.  Picasso soon found this process too labor intensive and found a solution with Arnera in the “reduction” method.  This method employed a single linoleum block, carved and printed, then recarved and printed multiple times in successive stages to add each different color of ink.  Colors would be printed one on top of the other, slowly building colors onto the print starting with the lightest color and proceeding to the darkest.  The advantage of the technique is that colors line up relatively easily at printing.  The disadvantage is that the artist must be absolutely certain of his next move, before carving away more of the block and printing the next color, as this carving cannot be undone. 

The present lot consists of the first and third (final) states of Femme nue cueillant des Fleurs together with the tracing paper layer used to make edits to the linoleum block.  As is the process with Picasso's “reduction” method, the first state was printed with only one color.  The artist then used glassine as tracing paper to trace the print and make line and color decisions as the work progressed and the block was recarved.  This impression, likely the only impression of this single-color state in existence, still has the tracing paper attached leaving visible evidence of Picasso’s hand at work. 

Many impressions from the Arnera estate have entered museum collections since they provide a tangible glimpse at Picasso’s working process.  The two linocuts presented here remained in Arnera’s estate until after his death in 2007 and are still in their original condition, having never been framed, clearly exhibiting the unique qualities of working proofs.