Chapter 8: A Survey
of Picasso’s Prints, Continued,
Another muse, another style. Or several. Picasso
met Jacqueline Roque in 1953, and she became his main squeeze the following
year, after Francoise had left him. Jacqueline remained with
Picasso for the last 20 years of his life, became his second wife,
and was the subject of more of his works than any other woman. In
printmaking, Picasso applied his full panoply of tricks to his
new muse, including etchings, aquatints and lithographs, and developed
his mastery
of linoleum
cuts,
finally
delivering a measure of color to his color-starved audience.
This lithograph, one of the three best of Jacqueline, most tenderly depicts her countenance and, with a few bold brushstrokes, brings out her sensitivity and intelligence so convincingly that the viewer feels he almost knows this woman. Interestingly, Picasso returned to this same zinc twice over the next twelve months. He presumably was dissatisfied with the appearance of these last two states, because they were not editioned. (Mourlot and Cantz say that the second state was not printed at all, though somehow a photo of it is shown in Cantz. The third state is illustrated in Mourlot.) One must be thankful, therefore, that Picasso saw fit to print the edition of this lithograph before he irrevocably altered it and became dissatisfied with his results. How often one wishes that he had done so with earlier states of other prints, when one or more of those earlier states seem superior to the final, editioned state. In this rare instance, we are grateful that Picasso perceived the beauty of the first outpouring of his vision onto the zinc and memorialized it on paper. Just as this is one of Picasso's loveliest prints, at almost 70 cm it is one of his largest. Table 26. 1956-1957
Table 27. 1957-1959
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