“Everything you can imagine is real.”
—Pablo Picasso One early-January day in 1969, a delivery of art supplies arrived at Pablo Picasso’s studio in Mougins, a village just above Cannes. At the time, Picasso was living a relatively secluded life on the French Riviera alongside his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, immersing himself completely in his artistic endeavours. The shipment of art supplies was contained in large protective panels of corrugated cardboard, which Picasso’s assistants casually lined-up against the studio wall. The blank, but textured packaging drew Picasso in, much alike freshly-stretched canvases that beg to be painted. On January 30th, Picasso could resist no longer and he painted a portrait on a piece of the corrugated cardboard. Over the next three months, he repeated this regularly, creating a series of 29 portraits in total, with the final painting dated May 7th, 1969.
Frans Hals, The Laughing Cavalier, 1624, The Wallace Collection. Image: IanDagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo The moustachioed figures who populate Picasso’s Portraits Imaginaire are bedecked with ruffs, hats, wigs and more. Infused with nods to the past, the dandies of these portraits echo the art historical canon, particularly the opulent yet playful portraiture of Frans Hals. Yet, Picasso invigorates the traditional genre with his quintessential post-cubist visual language, rendering the figures in bright colours and bold, gestural shapes. In their vivid hues of yellow, blue, pink and orange, the portraits evoke a playful sense of costume and caricature, as though Picasso is parodying art history, both adding to it and reimagining it.
Once complete, Picasso was delighted with the series of paintings and he sought out a master printmaker to reproduce the works as lithographs. Marcel Salinas, a highly-respected Parisian lithographer, was asked to produce two trial proofs; these impressed Picasso so much that not only did he proceed to commission Salinas for the entire series, but he also decided that Salinas’ name should be published alongside his own, making him the only printer to receive such an honour. Two hand-numbered editions of 250 were produced, one for world-wide distribution and one for France. Once the print series were complete, the lithographic stones were destroyed and the original paintings on cardboard remained in Picasso’s possession.
122
《想像的肖像》
1969年作
全套29組石版印刷 Arches紙本（全紙本，散裝如出版所示）附版權頁，全部存於原裝翻蓋式文件夾盒連印刷標題。
S. 約 65.5 x 50 公分（25 3/4 x 19 5/8 英吋）
文件夾 68.5 x 53 x 4 公分（26 7/8 x 20 7/8 x 1 5/8 英吋）
款識：編號 F 186/250
共有250版法國版「F」、250版美國版「A」，由紐約Harry N. Abrams出版，全為未裱法國版「F」第186版。
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成交價£114,300
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