Prints & Multiples

Published by Galerie Louise Leris, Paris, printed by Imprimerie Arnéra, Vallauris

Literature:

Bloch 1067, Baer 1279

Provenance:

Sold: Christie's New York, October 30, 2007, Lot 382

Renaissance Fine Arts, Baltimore

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Created in 1962, Portrait de Jacqueline au chapeau de paille belongs to Pablo Picasso’s celebrated series of late linocuts produced in Vallauris in collaboration with master printer Hidalgo Arnéra. During this highly inventive period, Picasso revolutionized the medium through the reduction technique, carving successive stages of the composition into a single linoleum block and printing each color in sequence. This process allowed for a fluid, painterly approach while eliminating the need for multiple blocks, resulting in bold contours, vivid color, and a striking immediacy unique to his linocut practice.

The pliable nature of linoleum enabled Picasso to work with remarkable speed and freedom, aligning with his late-career urgency and experimental spirit. Compared to the more laborious processes of etching and lithography, linocut offered a directness that translated into simplified, graphic forms and luminous planes of color. The composition, carefully premeditated yet executed with apparent spontaneity, demonstrates Picasso’s mastery of both line and color balance, achieved through a sequence of precisely planned cuts and overprinting.

Jacqueline Roque, Picasso’s wife and principal muse in his final decades, appears here as both subject and symbol. Her features are distilled into a dynamic interplay of frontal and profile views, recalling Cubist strategies while pushing them toward a more graphic, almost mask-like abstraction. The bold division of the face, the asymmetry of expression, and the interplay of red, yellow, green, and black create a sense of shifting identity and emotional duality, animating the composition with psychological depth.

Produced late in Picasso’s career, this work exemplifies his conviction that printmaking was not merely reproductive but a primary artistic medium. Alongside recurring themes such as bullfights and still lifes, his portraits of Jacqueline stand among the most iconic images of this period. These linocuts, with their clarity, innovation, and expressive force, remain some of the most influential graphic works of the twentieth century, affirming Picasso’s enduring legacy as a relentless innovator across media.