Prints and Multiples

Published by the Artist

Provenance:

Russeck Gallery, Palm Beach

Literature:

Bloch 297-298; Baer 615- 616

Lot Essay:

Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.

-Pablo Picasso 

Commenced by Picasso in January 8, 1937, Sueño y mentira de Franco (The Dream and Lie of Franco) is a vitriolic artistic response to the onset of the Spanish Civil War, which began in July 1936. Although the artist left Spain for France at the turn of the twentieth century, he remained strongly invested in his home country. The atrocities committed by General Francisco Franco’s military campaign spurred Picasso to openly condemn the regime with the creation of the present works. 

Composed as a grim comic, the two prints are each subdivided into three rows of three scenes that together form an eighteen-scene narrative. Picasso executed the images on the plates from left to right, but because of the printing inversion of etched plates, the scenes on paper must be read right to left. Rather than correcting the mistake, the artist chose to keep the reversal in order to express the chaos of war and Franco’s inversion of the established order, the carnivalesque Mundus inversus—the world turned upside down. 

Beginning in the first plate, Franco is depicted as medieval knight acting out parodies of heroic feats, dangerous in his haplessness—a grotesque turn as Spanish emblem, Don Quixote. Among other scenes, he is shown gored by a bull, also a symbol of Spain; dressed as a woman; and riding a pig. By the second plate, Franco’s vision of himself as Spanish hero is belied by the darker reality. In the upper right image, the general devours the innards of his own horse, which he has just killed. The remaining scenes were added on June 7, six weeks after the Basque town of Guernica was leveled by Nazi bombs with Franco’s support. The images include raw portrayals of a screaming figure and a wailing woman grieving over a dead child. These scenes are directly related to Picasso’s powerful anti-war mural painting Guernica, also created in 1937. 

On each plate, Picasso etched the date he began the work. Not only does this document the artworks, but it also overtly declares his critique of the violence of the contemporary conflict. In yet another act of defiance, Picasso donated all proceeds from the sale of prints to Spain’s Republican government. The pair of prints were produced in an edition of 800 with a stamped signature and an edition of 150 on larger sheets with pencil signatures. The present works are part of the rare hand-signed edition of 150, complete with the title page and dedicated text.