#Intaglio prints series

After the war, he explored the creative possibilities of lithography, spontaneously drawn directly onto the stone, before discovering a novel form of linoleum cuts printed in color. In these allegorical compositions, Picasso engraved Surrealist-inspired meditations on the emotional life of the artist in politically tempestuous times, culminating in the enormous etching Minotauromachy, the artist’s printmaking masterpiece. In the 1920s, in the wake of his transformative Cubist period, Picasso expanded his graphic vocabulary to include color pochoirs (stencil prints), lithographs, and aquatints before returning to a wide variety of intaglio techniques in the 1930s, when he produced some of the most stunning prints of his career.

#Intaglio prints series

His earliest prints, from 1904–5, form a series of simple drypoints, depicting acrobats and street performers, that reflect the Symbolist, dreamlike aesthetic of his Blue and Rose Periods. The evolution of Picasso’s printed work closely follows his development as a painter. Working in close collaboration with some of the best master printers of his generation, Picasso vigorously explored technical innovations that not only fueled his graphic imagination but also expanded the possibilities of printmaking as an expressive art form.

The majority of his vast graphic oeuvre of over two thousand unique images consists of intaglio prints that he scratched, scraped, gouged, or etched into a copper plate, before he switched to lithography and color relief printing later in his career. By almost any standard, Picasso could be considered the most influential printmaker of the twentieth century.