Picasso, La Suite Vollard

Like Rembrandt’s great engravings in the 17th century, Picasso produced some of the most powerful engraving work of the 20th century thanks to his expressive and inventive richness.The Suite Vollard is a central part of his engraving output. Made up of a hundred engravings, it symbolizes the quintessence of printmaking techniques. This daring series, created in the 1930s for the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard, made engraving an art form in its own right, on a par with painting, during the period preceding the iconic painting Guernica and the subsequent development of the themes of the artist’s personal mythology. Vollard’s premature death in 1939 left a question mark over his intentions for the work that he commissioned Picasso to produce. This Suite Vollard, which is preserved in the collections of the National Picasso Museum in Paris, comes from the print proofs signed by Picasso, printed from 1937 onward by the master printer Roger Lacourière. The whole set is now on display for the first time. Only a small circle of international museums (the National Picasso Museum in Paris, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the MoMA in New York, and the British Museum in London) preserve it in its entirety.