“Picasso has astonished the ablest printmakers again and again. It is not only that he masters the difficulties of new techniques with playful ease; he soon goes on to obtain results that had hitherto been deemed impossible. His approach to the engraving, the etching, the lithograph or the lino-cut is primarily that of the craftsman, who explores the secrets of the technique with patience and love.”
(G. Bloch, Pablo Picasso, catalogue of the printed work 1966-1969, Berne, 1971, p.13.)
In the early 1960s, Picasso created a series of linoleum cuts, published by the Galerie Louise Leiris. This series included many abstract and surrealist portraits of his wife Jacqueline Roque, who he met in 1953. Until the artist’s death in 1973, Jacqueline had been his main model and source of inspiration. In this portrait, Picasso obtained intense effects of colour, enabled by the technique.
