Color linoleum cut, 1963. 640x526 mm; 25 1/4x20 3/4 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 159/160 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Arnéra, Vallauris. Published by Le Patriote, Nice. A superb, richly-inked impression of this large linoleum cut with vibrant colors. Bloch 1152; Baer 1338.

Pablo Picasso, in full Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano María Remedios de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso, also called (before 1901) Pablo Ruiz or Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (born October 25, 1881, Málaga, Spain—died April 8, 1973, Mougins, France), Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most-influential artists of the 20th century.

Pablo Picasso was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. His ingenious use of form, color, and perspective profoundly impacted later generations of painters, including Willem-de-Kooning and David Hockney. “There are artists who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun,” he once said. Born Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano María de los Remedios de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso on October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Spain, his prodigious talent was cultivated early on by his father the painter Jose Ruiz Blasco. Picasso went on to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, and lived for a time in Barcelona before settling in Paris in 1904. Immersed in the avant-garde circles of Gertrude Stein, he rapidly transitioned from Neo-Impressionism through the Blue Period and Rose Period, before reaching a culmination in his masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Constantly in search of pictorial solutions and in dialogue with his friend Georges Braque, Picasso melded forms he saw in African sculpture with the multiple perspectives he gleaned from Paul Cezanne, to produce Cubism. Not limited to painting, the artist also expressed himself through collage, sculpture, and ceramics. Having been deeply affected by the ongoing Spanish Civil War, Picasso created what is arguably his most overtly political work Guernica (1937), a mural-sized painting depicting carnage with jagged shapes and contrasting grayscale. The artist was prolific up until his death on April 8, 1973 in Mougins, France. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, as well as institutions devoted solely to his life work, such as the Museo Picasso Málaga, the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, and the Musée National Picasso in Paris.

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