Pablo Picasso: The 156 Series | Edition 1/50
Executed between 1970 and 1972 at his studio in Mougins, the legendary 156 Series stands as Pablo Picasso’s definitive graphic testament—the final, breathtaking printmaking triumph of his seven-decade career. Working at an astonishing creative velocity alongside his revered master printers, Aldo and Piero Crommelynck, Picasso poured his lifelong artistic obsessions onto copper plates using a virtuosic combination of etching, drypoint, and sugar-lift aquatint. The suite unfolds as an unfiltered visual diary, weaving together vibrant theatrical tableaus, mythological bacchanals, circus acrobats, and penetrating homages to old masters like Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Degas. While Picasso etched and dated the plates prior to his death in 1973, the monumental edition was meticulously printed posthumously and published in 1978 by Paris’s historic Galerie Louise Leiris. Only two complete sets of the 156 plates were ever assembled and sold intact, leaving individual plates from the series among the most fiercely contested acquisitions in modern printmaking history.
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The select works curated in this collection occupy an elite tier of connoisseurship: each impression is numbered 1/50, representing the very first numbered piece printed for the limited public edition. Hand-printed on deckle-edged Vélin de Rives paper and stamped with Picasso's estate signature as originally issued, these premier number-one impressions exhibit rich tonal depth, crisp contrast, and velvety burr preserved in pristine condition.
