An Abundance of Creativity - Picasso's Prints at the Marlborough Gallery

Pablo Picasso, Visage [Visage de Marie-Thérèse], 1928,
lithograph image: 8 x 5 5/8 in. (20.32 x 14.29 cm),
an impression on large format Japan paper,
aside from the total edition of 225,
Ref: Bloch 95; Geiser/Baer 243; Morluot XXII
© 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Picasso’s genius is abundantly evident at the Marlborough Gallery, Celebrating the Muse: Women in Picasso’s Prints from 1905-1968. A display of over 200 prints – etchings, drypoints, lithograghs, linocuts – organized around the women in the artist’s life, demonstrates once again Picasso’s creative potency. Celebrated works such as La Minotauromachie, 1935, (whose fame and complex narrative brings to mind Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder Print), Les Saltimbanques, 1905 and Weeping Woman, 1937 as well as those less well known, testify to the artist’s protean talent . Themes appear, disappear then reappear in different guises. His remarkable power for artistic exploration and originality never wanes. Look at the 60 impressions on view from a set of 347 prints, called the Suite 347, that he produced from March 16 thorugh October 5, 1968 at the age of 86!

Another Picasso print exhibition, Picasso: Themes and Variations, at the Museum of Modern Art, is more far ranging in scope but smaller. Although informative with superb examples of printmaking, it is the Marlborough show that impresses more. You leave humbled.

Celebrating the Muse: Women in Picasso’s Prints from 1905-1968 remains through Saturday, May 8, 2010. It can then be seen at the Marlborough Gallery London from June 9 through July 2, 2010.

Pablo Picasso, Femme assise dans un fauteuil
[Portrait de Jacqueline au fauteuil] , 1966,
aquatint, etching, grattoir, and drypoint,
Plate: 18 3/4 x 12 3/4 in. (47.63 x 32.39 cm),
Sheet: 24 3/4 x 17 7/8 in. (62.87 x 45.40 cm),
Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 50,
Ref: Bloch 1394; Geiser/Baer 1416
© 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


Celebrating the Muse:

Women in Picasso’s Prints from 1905-1968
Marborough Gallery
40 West 57th Street, Manhattan
Monday - Saturday 10 AM to 5:30 PM
Through May 8, 2010