With his visual ideas, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) shaped the art of the 20th century like no other artist. The Fondation Beyeler houses an important Picasso collection, comprising over 30 of his works. Picasso is also the modern artist most strongly represented in the Fondation Beyeler collection.
The print Tête de Femme No. 2, a portrait of Dora Maar (1907–1997), was made three years after Picasso and the photographer first met. Showing the subject’s face simultaneously from the front and in profile, it strikingly illustrates the way in which the artist experimented with different perspectives and fused them together. The work is a four-colour print, executed in drypoint and aquatint on four copper plates, separately inked in yellow, pink, red and blue.
With his radical language of form and inexhaustible delight in experimentation, Picasso fundamentally changed the way we look at painting. He opened up new possibilities of expression for painting and constantly reinvented the medium throughout his life. For Picasso, each picture also represented a new approach to truth: If I seek the truth in my painting, I can paint a hundred pictures with this truth.”
Aquatint and drypoint in colours, 1939, on Montval laid paper, watermark Vollard, from the unsigned edition of 104 impressions, printed by Roger Lacourière, Paris, 1939-1942
45.1 x 34.1 cm
Dated upper right corner, reverse, 20.4.39
Courtesy: Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso
Provenance: donated by Almine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso
