Le Peintre à la Palette (Painter with Palette),

1963

The artist and his model in the studio was a major theme in Picasso’s paintings and prints; additionally, he created multiple series of works copied after historic paintings by artists such as Eugenè Delacroix and Édouard Manet, reinterpreted in his own audacious style. Picasso’s improvised variations on masterpieces culminated in a series of fifty-eight canvases analyzing Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656), a towering monument in Western art that depicts the Spanish master himself painting the daughter of King Philip IV and her entourage. This print combines the two themes: Picasso’s abstracted image of an artist at his easel is a clever variation on the figure of Velázquez holding his palette, including the curling hair, mustache, and goatee of the artist, as well as his outward gaze toward the viewer, for which the painting is famous.