Pablo Picasso: Linocuts Backgrounder Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) epitomized artistic innovation. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, his groundbreaking engagement with key movements such as cubism, surrealism and neo-classicism paralleled the development of European modernity. Spanning the fields of painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, drawing, collage and stage design, Picasso’s work inspired countless artists who were themselves towering figures in the twentieth century, including Jackson Pollock and Paul Gauguin. His rivals were also among them, in particular his friendship and lifelong competition with Henri Matisse. Born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881, he was an artistic prodigy, attending the prestigious School of Fine Art in Barcelona at age 13. He went on to study in Madrid at age 16, entering the Royal Academy of San Fernando. He was classically trained there, although he grew bored with the study of greats such as Velazquez and Michelangelo, preferring instead to roam the streets in search of inspiration. In 1900, Picasso began the Blue Period (1901 to 1904); prompted by the death of a friend, it included the cast of characters he had seen on the street in Barcelona and Madrid; clowns, vagrants and prostitutes. It was followed by the Rose period (1905 to 1907), which began with his move to Paris where he met Gertrude and Leo Stein, who transformed his career by becoming his major patrons and introduced him to the avant garde. At this time, he also became acquainted with the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. Inspired by this new modernity, as well as African, Roman and Iberian masks, his first major painting, Les Demoiselles de Avignon, created in 1907, established his reputation, and began his own transformation of the avant garde and the creation of Cubism along with Georges Braque. Lasting from 1907 to the outbreak of the first World War in 1914, his Cubist period is divided into two periods: Analytic, with works such as Girl with Mandolin, (1910) and Synthetic, which is epitomized by Card Player (1913-14). By 1918, he had become both famous and wealthy from the reputation he had earned through his art, one of the first artists to become an international art star. From 1918 to 1927, he returned to realism during his Classical Period, before becoming involved in the next major art movement of the 20th century: surrealism, which was itself a reaction to the Cubism he had introduced. In 1937, he created Guernica, the depiction of the bombing of a Basque village during the Spanish Civil War, his second turning point and major masterpiece. The

combination of the personal and political made it one of the most powerful works of the 20th century. Throughout his lifetime, the inventiveness of his approach led him to the creation of new artistic movements, as well as forms. He took up and often reinvented the terms of reference for the materials that he used. Such was the case for his work in linocut printmaking. Picasso’s first linocut was executed in 1939, but it was later in life that he returned to the form in 1954. Invited to produce annual posters for the bullfights in Vallauris, Picasso swapped his usual lithography method for linocut printmaking, and began working closely with master printer, Hidalgo Arnera, in what was often a collaborative working relationship. From 1954, until his last efforts in 1968, Picasso learned assiduously from Arnera, taking on the rules of the form, and reinventing them. Picasso had worked in other forms of printmaking, producing thousands of etchings and lithographs, but in linocuts, his finished works count fewer than 200. The linocut was at the time, considered along with woodcut printing, one of the lower forms of printmaking. It leant itself to an ease of execution; the soft plates were linoleum and easy to cut, made primarily from a combination of cork and linseed oil and intended as a soundproofing material for floors when it was developed in the 1860s. Matisse, who used the form prior to Picasso, compared the gouge of the tool on the surface of the linoleum to the sensitivity of a violin bow. Linocut printmaking evolved as a major professional printmaking technique under Picasso’s focus. Using a “reductive” printmaking method taught to him by Arnera, Picasso demonstrated that a complex image could be developed using a single linoleum sheet, rather than one for each colour as was the traditional method. Instead, he cleaned the plate and carved away what would not be imprinted for each successive colour, a practice that enabled him to continue to develop his imagery within one plate. As a result, Picasso was able to translate the characteristic brilliance of his paintings in their development of shape, colour and form into this new artistic process through spontaneity of execution that had not previously been seen in the medium. Picasso enjoyed printmaking for its rapidity and worked intensively with Arnera, as he had with other master printers, creating experimentally and collaboratively together; Picasso was quoted as stating that “I can’t do anything without you, and

you can’t do anything without me.”1 In an interview, Arnera once described their working relationship: Picasso worked for part of the night. Marcel, the driver, brought the works with annotations by Jacqueline Roque to the print shop. I prepared the proof copies and at precisely 1:30 pm, I took them to La Californie [the name of the villa where Picasso lived in Vallauris from 1955 to 1961]. That regular pace of work continued for eight years, every day except Saturdays and Sundays. Once Picasso had given his approval, the proof could be printed on the following day. The subsequent colour could then be printed two or three days later. In the meantime, Picasso worked on other compositions.2 The linocuts themselves deal with several major themes, ranging from the bullfight, to classical mythology and portraiture. For the first three posters he did with Arnera, Picasso provided drawings to Arnera for execution, but eventually he took over the carving of the plate itself, working directly into the surface to create his imagery; his lines range from the fine and elegant to the rough and staccato, a graphic language that can be found in his paintings and drawings, as well as the ceramic work he produced concurrently. Considering that Picasso worked intensively in the medium for a brief period of only eight years, his innovation and contribution to linocut as an artistic form was immense and inspired a generation of artists after him to use it as a major professional medium in their own practices. The Remai Art Gallery of Saskatchewan has the outstanding privilege of being given a virtually complete collection of linocuts produced in Arnera’s printmaking studio by Picasso; this collection of both the editioned linocuts and the subjects printed in only a few experimental proofs, along with many examples of the working states that reveal Picasso’s creative process, comprise the largest, and arguably the finest collection of Picasso linocuts in the world. Assembled by the London-based, Saskatchewan-born Canadian art dealer, Dr. Frederick Mulder, over a period of a decade, and donated to the Remai Art Gallery of Saskatchewan by the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation, this gift is one of the most extraordinary modern art collections ever to be gifted to a Canadian museum.

1 Hidalgo Arnera, quoted in Picasso Linocuts, (Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso Muenster, 2011) p. 25. 2 Pablo Picasso, Ibid, p. 25.