Reprints

Question: While I ponder my next purchase: the Picasso Museum has the Vollard plates, right? So why don’t they make a new edition? -Pam L.

1 thought on “Reprints”

  1. You’re right, the Musée Picasso Paris has the plate of the etching in which you’re interested [Bloch 193], but that plate was cancelled in 1956. Such details, including the status and current whereabouts of the copper plates, are published in the Baer/Geiser eight-volume tome on Picasso prints, which includes all his prints except his later lithographs, and which is the definitive reference, bar none. (I have all 8 volumes, in case you have any other specific questions.) The Musée Picasso, like other reputable museums, has no interest in publishing prints beyond the editions that were authorized by Picasso. Even if they were interested in pursuing such criminal activities, which would be hotly contested by the Picasso family as well as by the rest of the reputable art world, they would be limited in so doing by the cancellation lines. Furthermore, the paper used in the Vollard Suite, which contained alternately the Vollard and the Picasso watermarks is unavailable and would have to be faithfully forged. As far as anyone can tell, such catastrophes are simply not going to happen….

    Fake prints abound of course, but that’s another matter. There are many parameters along which one can distinguish authentic from forged prints.

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