• There’s nobody quite like Picasso, and we’re extremely excited to have secured a late etching from his legendary 347 Series. This is a fabulous opportunity to add a hand-signed, museum-quality artwork by the 20th century’s greatest master to your collection.
     
    Etchings from this series are extraordinarily sought-after, and to explain why, we’d like to go into a little more detail. Read on to explore the background and significance of this stunning piece of original work…
  • Picasso in the late 1960s

    Picasso in the late 1960s

    By 1968, Picasso had been the world’s greatest living artist for several decades. Since 1961 he had been living at his farmhouse Notre-Dame-de-Vie in the village of Mougins near Cannes. Following major surgery in 1965, he had given up travelling and become something of a recluse, seeing very few people. His place in history assured, his work fought over by museums and with no artistic vistas left to conquer, he might have been expected to rest on his laurels. This however, was not in Picasso’s nature. During the last four years of his life he would go on to produce over one hundred paintings and several hundred engravings, many of which would rank among his most audacious and controversial. 

  • A proliferation of print

    A proliferation of print

    Picasso made his first print in 1899 and his last in 1972. He produced around 2400 individual images in total, over a third of which were made in the final seven years of his life. The importance he attached to his graphic work is clear. At a time when his images in paint were becoming more economical and gestural, his mastery of the drawn line continued to ascend new heights.

     

    This late flourishing of printmaking would find its apotheosis in the 347 Series, so named because of the number of images it contains. Between March and October 1968 he dedicated himself exclusively to the production of etchings, completing this extraordinary suite in just 204 days.

     

    This enterprise was made possible by the brothers Piero and Aldo Crommelynck, two of the 20th century’s greatest engravers, who were so keen to work with Picasso that they followed him from Paris to Mougins, setting up a workshop in an old bakery close to his farmhouse. His efforts would keep them busy for nearly a decade.

     

    “He never ceases exploring” they wrote. “The astounding rapidity of his hand, combined with an equal quickness of mind…enable him to accomplish in a single operation what others would be obliged to spread over several phases.”

  • The 347 Series, 'Braggart in his Sunday Best behind the Scenes of a Circus' (1968)

    The 347 Series

    "Braggart in his Sunday Best behind the Scenes of a Circus" (1968)

    The 347 Series reads like a personal diary, with each etching obsessively dated and annotated. Across these images Picasso records his experiences, desires and imaginings, taking on the shifting guise of artist, buffoon, faun and jester. Speaking about these works, he claimed that 'Of course, one never knows what's going to come out, but as soon as the drawing gets underway, a story or an idea is born, and that's it. I spend hour after hour while I draw, observing my creatures and thinking about the mad things they're up to. Basically, it's my way of writing fiction.'

     

    Picasso’s smaller social circle in his late years obliged him to reach back into his past and into the work of his favourite artists in order to expand his cast of characters. Circus performers had been a fascination for the artist since the 1890s, and they had been the catalyst for his extraordinary Rose Period beginning in 1904. Here, almost at the end of his life, Picasso invokes these youthful avatars once again, an act of cheerful defiance against the passage of time.

     

    This etching was one of five that Picasso created in just one day, on 21st September 1968.

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  • Legacy

    Upon its simultaneous exhibition in Paris and Chicago in 1970, the 347 Series was an extraordinary succès de scandal. When exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago it was deemed pornographic, and the exhibition was closed down. When the prints were exhibited in Japan in 1973, 24 were deemed too controversial to be hung publicly, and a further 33 were displayed as retouched photographs. By that time, only a handful of the original 50 sets remained intact.

    The prints were swiftly recognised as a remarkable achievement by the century’s greatest artist, and now, nearly six decades later, they remain among the most sought after of Picasso’s graphic works.