Pablo Picasso

Who

Born in Malaga on 25 October 1881, he worked in France for most of his life and died at Mougins on 8 April 1973. Painter, sculptor, printmaker and, from 1947, a maker of ceramics with the Madoura pottery. He was exceptionally prolific for the whole of a very long life.

Why they matter

He changed what a painting was allowed to do more than once. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) broke the figure into planes, and Cubism followed from it. Guernica, painted in about five weeks in 1937 for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition, became the century's image of a city bombed from the air. And he kept making, in every medium, until he died: the prints and ceramics are as much his work as the canvases.

What to buy

Prints: the Art Institute of Chicago shop sells prints of its own Picassos, The Old Guitarist among them, from the museum that holds the paintings; that beats any anonymous poster. Books: John Richardson's A Life of Picasso is the standard biography, in four volumes (1991, 1996, 2007 and 2021); Richardson died in 2019, and the last volume, published after his death, ends in 1943. For prints, the reference is Georges Bloch's catalogue of the printed graphic work, in four volumes.

Originals: realistic, because he really was a printmaker and a potter. Between 1947 and 1971 he designed 633 ceramic editions with the Madoura workshop, each marked underneath or on the back with stamps such as "Madoura Plein Feu", "Empreinte Originale de Picasso" or "Edition Picasso"; they are catalogued by Ramie, and a genuine one should match its A.R. number. Among the prints, unsigned lithographs from the minor suites printed by Mourlot are the most accessible tier; the hundred etchings of the Vollard Suite (1930-1937) sit well above them. The trap is the "Marina Picasso Estate" lithographs, published 1979-1982 with his granddaughter's authorisation and made after his death by the chromist Marcel Salinas, copying works in the estate. However they are numbered and stamped, Picasso never saw them: they are reproductions, and so is anything labelled "after Picasso". Buy with a Bloch or Ramie number, from an auction house.

Notes

Guernica stayed at MoMA in New York from 1939, at his wish, until democracy returned to Spain; it arrived in Madrid in 1981 and has hung at the Museo Reina Sofia since 1992. Gertrude Stein left her portrait to the Met in 1946. He is in copyright, so this entry links no free image archives; museum collection pages show the work.

Story

In 1963 the architects of Chicago's new Civic Center asked Picasso, then past eighty, to design a monumental sculpture for its plaza. He made a maquette, and the Public Building Commission drew up a document making its fee the purchase price of the maquette and all rights in it, copyright included. Picasso refused the money and would not sign: he wanted the work to be a gift to the city. The sculpture, fifty feet of COR-TEN steel, was dedicated on 15 August 1967.

The city then learned what giving something away can mean. The maquette had gone on public show at the Art Institute on 20 September 1966, where anyone could copy it. Newspapers had printed photographs of it, a souvenir booklet had gone to the dedication's guests, postcards of it had been sold, and none of them carried a copyright notice; nor did the sculpture itself until 4 August 1967. When a publisher, Letter Edged in Black Press, wanted to sell copies, it sued to have the commission's copyright declared invalid. On 22 December 1970 Judge Napoli agreed: the Chicago Picasso had entered the public domain.

The man who would not sell his design ended up giving it away twice: once to Chicago, and once, by court order, to everybody. The maquette is still at the Art Institute.

Key works

• The Old Guitarist (1903-1904) - Art Institute of Chicago
• Gertrude Stein (1905-1906) - The Met, New York
• Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) - MoMA, New York
• Guernica (1937) - Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid
• Maquette for the Richard J. Daley Center sculpture (1964) - Art Institute of Chicago

In museum collections

• Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)
  MoMA ↗
• Weeping Woman (1937)
  Art UK ↗
• The Old Guitarist (1903)
  Art Institute of Chicago ↗
• La Vie (1903)
  Cleveland Museum of Art ↗
• The Actor (1904)
  The Met ↗
• Boy Leading a Horse (1906)
  MoMA ↗
• Family of Saltimbanques (1905)
  National Gallery of Art ↗
• Gertrude Stein (1905)
  The Met ↗
• Girl before a Mirror (1932)
  MoMA ↗
• The Three Dancers (1925)
  Art UK ↗
• At the Lapin Agile (1905)
  The Met ↗
• The Tragedy (1903)
  National Gallery of Art ↗

See the work

Prints

Books

Originals

See also

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