Pablo Picasso, BOUQUET IN THE HANDS, 1958

55.50 x 39.40 cm - color lithograph, Arches paper
65 x 49.5 cm (paper)
signed lower right on the plate: Picasso | 21.4. 58.
paper with a dry stamp on the lower right: EDITIONS COMBAT POUR LA PAIX | COPYRIGT [sic!] S.P.A.D.E.M. PARIS


Pablo Picasso drew and painted from childhood, initially learning from his father, a painter and curator at a museum in Málaga, and later at the La Lonja School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. In 1900, he traveled to Paris for the first time, and in 1904, he settled there permanently. His work during the first quarter-century is divided into periods, defined by specific characteristics of his works, such as color palette, style of distortion, etc.: the Blue Period (1901–1903), the Rose Period (1905–1906), the pre-Cubist period (1907–1909), the Cubist period (1909–1917), and the Classical period (1918–1924). After he had developed and refined his own artistic language, the subsequent stages of Picasso’s career were defined more by periods of interest in one theme or another, or in a particular technique. Thus, we can distinguish the “Great Bathers” period (1927–1937), which ran parallel to the artist’s intense engagement with sculpture (1930–1935), a period defined by the creation of “Guernica” (1937–1939), and periods spent living and working in places such as Vallauris (1947–1954), Cannes and Vauvenargues (1955–1961), and Mougins (1961–1973)—all in the south of France. Another, equally valid way of organizing the chronology of Picasso’s work is to designate its phases by the names of the women who were important in his life. An important, though secondary, aspect of his work was printmaking, which he pursued from the very beginning of his career until his final years.