Pablo Picasso, Bacchanal: Nocturnal Dance with an Owl (Danse Nocturne Avec un Hibou), Linocut, 1962

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Bacchanal: Nocturnal Dance with an Owl (Danse nocturne avec un hibou)

Colour Linocut on Vellum paper

year 1962

sheet size: 317 x 383 mm
image size: 270 x 327 mm

plate number 33 from the collection of Linocut published by Cercle d'Art editions in 1962

Great Condition: negligible signs of ages, never framed - please see pictures!
Note on condition: our artwork is complete, neither cropped nor trimmed. We insist on that because some people used to crop linocuts from these series in order to cut the small numbers lower left, for aesthetic reason: this way, the artwork loses its integrity and even most of its economic value. We are selling a complete artwork, not crippled, and we show it all - one of the pictures includes the edges. Tip: if one does not like the small number, it is easy to hide it under a passepartout when matted - just don't trim the artwork!

This is a real linocut from the original edition dated 1962 (NOT from the lithograph/digital reprints published in 1988 and 2020)
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Picasso and Linogravure (Linocut)

Picasso's activity on linocut is late, and certainly due to the desire to give color, having in lithographs a secondary role, a leading one in graphic creation. Thus, the artist did not intend to discover a new series of contents and forms, but to adapt his figurative world to new technical possibilities. And so, as in all of Picasso's experiences - whether in plastic, lithography, ceramics, or aquatint - the results obtained can only be compared to Picasso's own previous creations.
We do not know what chance event brought Picasso into contact with the unusual medium of linoleum. Just as a year earlier he had finished painting "L'Arlésienne" with dove feathers collected from the courtyard of his house "La Californie" in Cannes, rather than with a brush, the linocuts may also have had an equally casual immediate inspiration. However, in comparing the aquatints of the "Tauromachia" with the brush drawings immediately preceding the linocuts, a fundamental difference is immediately spotted. The engravings are static and two-dimensional, so much so that they sometimes create a silhouette effect. The artist then used several very different expedients to adapt his motifs to the possibilities offered by printed linocut. Although he had previously only made woodcuts, Picasso soon found himself at ease in this new field where he ventured with rapid decision and treats the docile material according to methods of extreme ductility. Linear and two-dimensional schemes are used and exhibited by numerous superimpositions of the same colour, or by repeatedly reprinting the same matrix appropriately modified. Among the various colour agreements, the ideal type prevails in the combination of ochre, brown and black inspired by the color scheme of Greek vases and which inexplicably also responds perfectly to the needs of the most modern technique.
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Picasso and Bacchanalia

A cheerful licentiousness - characteristic of the stay in Antibes in 1946 - is evoked in no less than ten linocuts, with Dionysian themes. The first monochrome artwork is from 1959, and stands out from the previous production for its bold design and lively undulations, with decisive lines. Very simple in technique, for the two-dimensional effect, it is a dancing group of three figures. But the artist soon abandons himself to an unprecedented decorative and chromatic magnificence, obtained by cutting the linoleum sheet along a horizontal line.
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On This Artwork

An original monochrome scene: its figures represent the maximum point of essentiality. In the Bacchanalia, it is clear that Picasso wanted to return to monochrome, to experiment with maximum concentration the graphic possibilities of the new linoleum technique.