Printer: Ind Graf. N. Moneta (1 of 1,000 Editions)

Dimensions: 140 x 95 cm

Condition: Very good, linen backed

Available: In a bespoke red oak frame

Description: This rare original lithograph was commissioned for Picasso’s landmark 1953 retrospective at Milan’s Palazzo Reale, a cultural turning point for post-war Italy. The exhibition is historically renowned for the installation of Guernica within the roofless, bomb-scarred Sala delle Cariatidi. 

While Guernica confronted the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and WWII, this image of the artist's son, Paulo as Pierrot (1925), was chosen to lead the exhibition’s public campaign. In a city still marked by conflict, the image suggests continuity, a sense of steadiness, and a return to classical balance.

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.