Offering both well-known and rarely seen prints by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Unseen Picasso at the Norton Simon Museum is a small, but fascinating exhibition of sixteen prints that provides viewers with a behind-the-scenes look at the artist’s printmaking process between the 1930s and 1960s. While highlighting the qualities that make each of these works on paper unique, the exhibition also makes clear the tremendous creative energy Picasso drew from printmaking over the course of his life-long engagement with the craft. As I wandered around the exhibition, studying each work carefully, I soon felt transported to Picasso’s studio in the south of France where I imagined the artist huddled over his experiments with lithographs and linocuts, mastering the intaglio techniques of aquatint, drypoint, and etching, scribbling “bon à tirer,” good to pull, once he’d finally achieved perfection.
Among the selected prints, Portrait of Woman in Hat with Pompoms is a standout (Figure 1). This colorful linocut masterpiece from 1962 is a showcase of Picasso’s ingenuity. Rather than use a separate block for each of the five colors, Picasso printed from a single block, cutting and printing as he went from yellow to red, blue to green, and finally black. Although Picasso likely had a color drawing to work from as a guide, he would still have had to have worked out in his mind how each alteration to the block would affect the final composition, and the end result is stunning. You can also observe in this print the benefits of linoleum as a medium. Being softer and more pliant, it allowed the artist greater control to create more fluid strokes. This print is further notable for its pristine pigments, particularly the red, which can fade to orange over time but is still quite vibrant here.
Another print that stood out to me is the 1946 lithograph Two Nude Women (Figure 2). This print is truly a testament to Picasso’s commitment to his craft as he spent three months working on this composition with master printer Fernand Mourlot producing twenty-one states of which this print is an unrecorded trial proof between the seventh and eighth states. I think it’s interesting to note the manner in which Picasso rendered the two figures in this print. While the reclining woman on the right, with her eyes closed, is more naturalistic, the seated woman on the left, with her eyes open, is more abstract. The interplay between these opposing styles within the same composition seems to underscore the experimental nature of the printmaking process itself, a practice that was well-suited to Picasso’s meticulousness and the accelerated pace at which he worked. This print is also unique for being the only print of this campaign to be printed in color.
Bacchanal with Goats and Spectator, a linocut in five colors from 1959, is another work notable for its vivid pigments (Figure 3). Depicting a scene of revelry inspired by ancient pastoral sources, this print is distinguished by its blue pigment in particular, a color prone to lightening over time that remains as vibrant as ever here used to represent a mountain lake and sky. This work is also striking due to its complex design. Picasso reduced his subjects to basic shapes and balanced the twisting figures dancing in the green foreground with the highly decorative white clouds that fill the sky above. Picasso used three linoleum blocks he carved and joined together to achieve this effect. This joyous scene is also a reflection of the happiness Picasso felt in his personal life living with Jacqueline Roque, his soon-to-be second wife, who is featured in another work in the exhibition, the 1959 linocut Portrait of Jacqueline Leaning on Her Elbows (Figure 4).
The exhibition also features portraits of two other very important women in Picasso’s life, artists Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot. Importantly, each of these three women – Roque, Maar, and Gilot – receive a brief biography and photograph along with their portraits, which tell us of their lives and acknowledge too in the case of Maar and Gilot, the negative impact their relationship with Picasso had on their own artistic careers. Head of Woman, No. 3 (Portrait of Dora Maar), an aquatint from 1939, reveals a more stoic version of Maar than we typically see in portraits by Picasso where Maar embodies the figure of “the weeping woman,” expressing a dark period in both the artist’s life and in history (Figure 5). Picasso’s mother died in 1939, Barcelona fell to Franco’s forces, and the threat of another world war was looming. Maar would later resent the characterization of her as a symbol of suffering. The annotation on this print, “epreuve d’état,” artist’s proof, indicates Picasso intended to keep this print for his own use.
Woman with Hairnet, a lithograph in four colors from 1956, is perhaps my favorite of the exhibition (Figure 6). This portrait of Françoise Gilot shares stylistic similarities with the statuary of ancient Egypt in the static quality of Gilot’s pose, her frontality and symmetry, and the way in which her mass of hair, gathered by a hairnet, frames her face like that of a pharaoh wearing a ceremonial headcloth. This print uses four zinc plates, one for each color, and includes Picasso’s inscription of “bon à tirer,” good to print, indicating to the printer that this is the final trial proof. Gilot was Picasso’s muse for almost ten years, and the contentment he experienced with her is reflected in his portraits of her, typically featuring an oval face with bright eyes, a slim nose, and cupid-bow lips. However, after Gilot left him and published her 1964 memoir, Life with Picasso, Picasso attempted to blacklist her. Despite this, Gilot never stopped producing art and on November 26, 2021 celebrated her one-hundredth birthday.
Although certainly a showcase of Picasso’s prodigious talent for, and dedication to, printmaking as an art form, as well as being a window into the complex world of printmaking itself, Unseen Picasso is also an insightful look at the material role women played in the artist’s life and work beyond their typically reductive labels as muse, model, or paramour. Of course when talking about women and Picasso there are many women to talk about and this exhibition is only able to highlight the three – Maar, Gilot, and Roque – whose visages appear in this particular selection. However, it was encouraging to see their stories included at all, as this level of representation in museum labels has not always been the case. Unseen Picasso is therefore a thoughtful and compelling exhibition worth seeing for viewers who are interested in learning more about both Picasso’s printmaking process and the women he drew.
Unseen Picasso is on view at the Norton Simon Museum through January 10, 2022. For more information, visit the museum’s website.