The British Museum showcases Picasso's work as a printmaker

Picasso created more than 2,400 prints throughout his life. From his early years as an artist in Paris to his old age in southern France, printmaking offered the artist the opportunity to unfold all his ideas, tell stories, and embark on new creative adventures. An exhibition at the British Museum, 'Picasso: Printmaker', which can be seen at the London museum until March 30, brings together nearly a hundred prints that illustrate this facet.

The exhibition offers a journey through Picasso's life via his art, including his tumultuous relationships with women and his work with printers, publishers, and other artists. The exhibition reviews the different printmaking techniques employed and his changing approaches to his projects. "People are more familiar with his paintings. We wanted to show that printmaking is a really important creative area of his work and that he achieved great things in this field," says the exhibition curator, Catherine Daunt, a specialist in modern and contemporary prints at the British Museum.

The exhibition, which includes works made from 1904, after Picasso's arrival in Paris until 1971, is the largest dedicated by the British center to the artist so far, with 97 prints out of the 553 of the genius owned by the institution. The exhibition gathers prints created in the early 20th century, before and after Picasso's revolutionary painting 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' (1907), which paved the way for Cubism. It also includes a group of prints from the Vollard Suite, a series of 100 etchings made in the 1930s that reveal the influence of classical art on Picasso's work, while reflecting his tumultuous personal life.

From 1930 to 1936, Picasso produced a series of 97 copper engravings, which he sold in 1937 to Ambroise Vollard, along with three portraits of him. In return, Picasso received some works he coveted for his private collection. Initially, he intended to make more portraits of Vollard, but this was not possible due to the advanced age of the dealer, who was already over seventy years old. In that Vollard Suite, there are references to the Spanish Civil War, such as the etching 'The Dream and Lie of Franco', present in the exhibition.

The thematic contributions include the circus, bullfighting, love and sex, and Picasso's interrelations with artists of the past. The exhibition ends with a selection from the Suite 347, named after the number of prints in the series, which Picasso completed at the age of 86 in 1968, in a brilliant burst of late creativity. "Later we see his interest in lithography and linocut, and finally the prints he made when he was at the end of his life, when he was thinking about his legacy. So we see many different elements of Picasso in this exhibition," notes Daunt.

Without experience or preparation, Picasso undertook his first print, 'The Left-Handed', in 1899, when he was 17 years old. In the work, he shows a picador. In 1904 he made the etching 'The Frugal Meal', which opens the exhibition and is considered a masterpiece of his early period.

The prints of the Suite 156, created by Picasso on copper plates between January 1970 and March 1972, represent a sort of testament to the artist's talent, even at the advanced age of nearly 90 years. This collection denotes influences from great masters such as Rembrandt, Degas, Goya, Murillo, and Delacroix. The suite accounts for the technical experimentation that characterized the painter, from the basic use of acid to sophisticated aquatints with resins or sugar. "His prints are like a personal diary, as he always included elements of his own life. We learn a lot about his life with them. We see the people who meant a lot to him, his wives and lovers. They are a reflection of his emotions, his experiences, the artists who inspired him. He was a very inventive and creative printmaker," Daunt asserts.