Printer: Mourlot (1 of 2,500 Editions)

Description: 71 x 49 cm

Condition: Very good 

Frame: Charcoal

Description: Picasso’s Femme et Enfant (Woman and Child), painted in 1965, was chosen for this original exhibition poster for the Sixième Biennale de Peinture, held in Menton on the French Riviera in 1966. It was printed at the Atelier Mourlot in Paris under the direction of Henri Deschamps, one of the master printers who worked closely with Picasso throughout his career.

By the mid 1960s, Picasso was in his eighties and still working at an astonishing pace. His later paintings became increasingly spontaneous, painted with the confidence of an artist who no longer felt the need to prove anything. Living on the Côte d’Azur, he drew constant inspiration from the Mediterranean and its light, making Menton an entirely fitting place for an international exhibition of contemporary art.

The real appeal of this poster is that it belongs to Picasso’s final creative chapter. Far from slowing down, he continued to experiment, surprise and reinvent himself almost until the end of his life.

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.