COMPTON VERNEY.- Compton Verney’s captivating new exhibition brings fresh attention to the often overlooked yet brilliantly inventive printmaking career of one of the most influential figures of 20th century art.

More than 70 works from the superlative collection of Dusseldorf’s Museum Kunstpalast reveal Picasso’s insatiable curiosity and remarkable ability to exploit the creative possibilities of the medium over a forty year period.

The show – which is a touring exhibition of works dating from the 1920s to the 1960s when he was fully engaged in the medium – traces Picasso experiments in various media, including etching, lithography, aquatint and linocut, on a wide variety of subjects, some of them offering a tantalising glimpse into the artist’s personal life.

Picasso talked of printmaking as his way of ‘writing fiction’ and this is reflected in the recurrent themes of bullfighting, family and Greek mythology all of which are strongly represented in Picasso on Paper, with iconic prints such as the 26-strong series La Tauromaquia and Dying Minotaur coming to the nationally-celebrated gallery in Warwickshire.

Picasso regarded printmaking as every inch an important art form as painting. So much so that he created over 2000 prints during his lifetime. He received no formal training in the craft, but acquired great skill on his own volition and in very close collaboration with master printmakers, often breaking the rule book to great success. To one printer with whom he worked almost daily for 8 years, Picasso is purported to have said: ‘I can’t do anything without you and you can’t do anything without me’.

Picasso on Paper is complemented by eight ceramics created in association with the Madoura pottery near Antibes in Provence. These remarkable works, reflecting themes in the prints, are on loan from Leicester Arts and Museums Service by kind permission of The Estate of Lord and Lady Attenborough and have been chosen to demonstrate the direct relationship between Picasso’s printmaking and his work in ceramic, and to highlight the importance of collaboration in the constant experimentation that drove Picasso’s work.

In Picasso on Paper the visitor will take a journey through four decades of his work, the exhibition being hung broadly thematically to give a greater understanding of the development of his interests in a range of subjects:

The pair of lithographs that depict Claude and Paloma, the two children Picasso had with Françoise Gilot, are tender, monochrome images he created using his fingers. Not having any lithographic tools available at that moment, he created the images by thinning solidified ink with water and dipping his fingers in the liquid.

Picasso often used lithography for his portraits and his relationship with the beautiful Françoise renewed his interest in portraiture. His arresting 1946 litho, Françoise is a simple line drawing that captures her striking looks and personality. Interestingly, it is one of eleven images Picasso made of her – in her own right a successful artist – in one day. In each portrait he included a tiny mole under her left eye and drew her right eyebrow in the form of a circumflex accent.

Head of a Woman with Crown is unmistakably Picasso. The woman in question is Jacqueline Roque, his second wife. For this portrait he used linocut. It was a medium Picasso took up in the early 1950s, after a move to the South of France had made etching and lithography more difficult, as it required specialist equipment. His use of the medium revived interest in linocut as a legitimate technique for artists – as opposed to a teaching aid or handicraft – especially as Picasso used it with such great ingenuity.

Modern Spain may be moving towards banning bullfighting, but for Picasso it held a life-long fascination. For him it was emblematic of Spanish culture and therefore his origins. Bullfighting also conveyed key themes that reflected aspects of his life and the world around him; victim and executioner; violence and tenderness; light and shadow. Not only that, he identified the rituals and sacrifice associated with bullfighting with the battle of the artist.

In Jumping with the pole – one of the prints from the Tauromaquia series of 26 aquatint etchings illustrating an 18th century book on the art of bullfighting - Picasso has captured a moment in the fight, with the bull charging at the matador. With aquatint, he could produce tones rather than lines. These were produced with a paintbrush and demonstrate Picasso’s gift as draughtsman, in the way he could suggest forms with great ease and speed. It is as if, like a photograph, he has frozen a moment in the drama. The contrast of the white foreground and the simple three slashes of ink to represent shadows convey the intense heat and light of a Spanish summer’s day. In contrast, Head of a Bull is playful and characterful.

Picasso used printmaking to explore complex new subject matter which was often semi-autobiographical and hidden in the form of alter egos such as the Minotaur. Picasso identified with the half-man, half-bull monster of Greek myth as an outsider and creature associated with uncontrolled emotion and virility. Dying Minotaur is one of a series of prints appearing to cast Picasso in the role of the beast. Here, echoing both a bullfight and gladiatorial combat, the dying Minotaur appeals to a row of spectators, all of whom have the likeness of Marie-Therèse Walter, his then love.

Compton Verney Head of Programming Alison Cox says: “Compton Verney is the only UK venue for Picasso on Paper which is an opportunity to see works by one of the most important figures in the history of art, from one of the world’s great collections. The exhibition takes a significant look at forty years of Picasso’s career and gives a terrific insight into the stunning variety of his techniques.”

She adds: “People don’t necessarily know how inventive he was as a printmaker, and may be intrigued by the range of images on show, from the paternal tenderness of the portraits of his children to the dynamism and energy of his depiction of bulls and minotaurs.”