Details
The image
A printmaker’s subject: lines crossing at angles, a form that reads as a face from one direction and as an animal from another, the paper left bare between the marks. The composition is spare and the drawing is quick and the sheet looks like a page from a workbook.
Where it comes from
The poster advertises the 1959 exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s prints at the Galerie de la Colombe in Vallauris, a town where he had been working for years. Print exhibitions of the period were announced with posters that showed the medium itself, an etching, a lithograph, a linocut, rather than a finished painting. The choice was practical and didactic at once: it told the audience what they were going to see and it let the printer’s craft stand as the image.
On the wall
It suits a study, a hallway or a living room with plain walls, where a linear composition reads without competing. Because the paper dominates, it needs daylight and a wall that is not too dark. In a group it should be the lightest piece.
In company
If you want company for it, the Modern collection is where to look.Avoid hanging it beside saturated colour, the bare paper is the point.
