Printer: Imp. Devaye, Cannes 

Dimensions: 66 x 48 cm

Condition: Very good condition

Frame: Framed in charcoal

Description: Few places meant more to Picasso after the Second World War than Antibes. In the autumn of 1946 he spent several months working at the Château Grimaldi, producing an extraordinary body of paintings and drawings inspired by the Mediterranean, classical mythology and the optimism that followed the end of the war.

This original exhibition poster reproduces Tête de faune cornu (Head of a Horned Faun), a drawing Picasso made on 1 November 1946 during his stay at the château. The faun became one of the recurring figures in his post-war work, drawing on the myths of the ancient Mediterranean and reflecting the freedom, humour and imagination that characterise this remarkable period of his career.

The exhibition was held at the Musée Picasso in Antibes, housed in the very château where Picasso had worked more than thirty years earlier. The museum itself owes its existence to the artist’s generous gift of paintings and drawings to the city, becoming the first museum dedicated to his work. It works as more than an exhibition advertisement, it recalls one of the most productive and relaxed phases of Picasso’s long career.

Artist: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, his extraordinary artistic genius made him the ‘rock star’ of the Modern Art world pioneering cubism, surrealism, expressionism and collage. Throughout his long career, he produced more than 20,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, theatre sets, and costumes. From the mid-1940s, he also worked with the Mourlot studios in Paris and created over 400 lithographs and exhibition posters. As well as Fernand Mourlot, Henri Deschamps was Picasso's favourite and most trusted master printer at the studio and they collaborated together from 1945 right up until Picasso’s death in 1973.