Collectors' List No. 107 • 2003 Picasso Prints Introduction

	NOTE: Linked large images in this collection have now been archived. If you would like to view images other than those thumbnailed here please contact us email.
Some of the most significant prints of the twentieth century were made to illustrate books. This is particularly the case in 1920s and 1930s Paris, where the livre illustre or livre du peintre emerged as a spectacularly viable marketing arrangement to the benefit of all parties: collectors, artists and dealers. ...In 1936, nearly 200 years after Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, began his epic 44 volume natural history, Pablo Picasso's dealer, Ambroise Vollard, commissioned Picasso to undertake a suite of etchings to illustrate Buffon's magnum opus for a special limited edition. ...In her Prints of the 20th Century: A History, the Museum of Modern Art's Riva Castleman, argued that deluxe illustrated editions allowed the artist to reach a broader audience, who, in turn, viewed their new acquisitions as having a new found integrity. Ultimately, this created a wider market for individually published prints. As the illustrated book evolved in the late 1920s, its pictorial matter became more eye-catching. Extra suites of plates were added to special copies of the books and many found their separate ways into the single print market. ...In his illustrations for Buffon's natural history we encounter the visionary Picasso. Here then, is the individual who invented modernity in art for the twentieth century and helped invent the artistic vocabulary of Cubism, Surrealism, and Post-Modernism, calling on his love for animals to reacquaint the contemporary consciousness with Buffon one of the greatest of all synoptic naturalists. ...Picasso's technical accomplishments cannot be overemphasized. The printer, Roger Lacouriere, had just introduced Picasso to the technique of sugar-lift aquatint. Picasso was eager to test out this new printing method which involves coating a copper plate covered in a ground (an acid resistant protection such as wax or resin) with a sugar-water solution, working the plate with aquatint, and then soaking the plate to dissolve the sugar-water solution through the ground and lighten the surface of the plate. This technique enables the artist to work in a much wider range of grays rather than the prescriptive black and white of the standard etching. ...Between 1936 and 1937, Picasso produced 31 plates, plus a supplementary image of a nude. However, these images were not published until after Vollard's death in an automobile accident in 1939, when Martin Fabiani brought them out in 1942. The portfolio was published in an edition of 226 copies, including 36 copies on various papers containing a separate suite of the prints with remarques (a small annotation such as title or drawing by the artist in the margin of the print making it individual), 55 copies on Montval wove, and 135 copies on Vidalon wove watermarked either "Ambroise" or "Vollard." The impressions on offer are on Vidalon from the standard issue which does not include the remarques and the nude. Another unusual feature is that there are no plate marks, with the exception of the wolf (no. 31), on the images because the actual printing plate was larger than the paper. ...In many ways the choice of Buffon's text was brilliant. Illustrated books began with the winsome ideal of artist and author working in a genial collaboration under the publisher's benevolent guidance. Unfortunately, hostility rather than harmony prevailed such that publishers chose to work with the artist alone illustrating works out of copyright and authors who could not fight back such as Virgil, Ovid and Balzac. The place of the Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière in the European scientific and philosophical canon is undisputed. Buffon, who rejected his contemporaries' popular conceptions of God and insisted on the strict separation of religion and science, turned to natural causes to explain his world. ...Perhaps Buffon should have the last words. When he was admitted to the French Academy in 1753 Buffon presented his Discourse on Style and delivered the celebrated dictum: "The style is the man himself". What better way to describe Picasso. Richard Groves