Pablo Picasso – Linocuts – Linogravures – Linoleum Cuts – First UK Edition – 1963

Illustrator: Pablo Picasso Introduced By Boeck, Wilhelm
Price: £3000
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Edition: First edition
Publication Date: 1963
Format: Original cloth. Slipcase
Condition: Very good

Description:

Publisher: Thames & Hudson. Date: 1963. First UK edition. Printed in Germany. pp. XIII + 45 linocuts printed on one side only. Sheet sizes: 38.2cm x 31.7cm. These linocuts were first issued in signed editions of fifty by Galerie Louise Leiris and printed by Arnéra. Because of the ‘reduction’ method invented and used by Picasso, which used just one plate of linoleum instead of a separate one for each colour, it was impossible to make any more prints from the original plates. Therefore, in collaboration with Picasso and Galerie Louise Leiris, new linoleum plates were made at 42% of the original size, and it was from these that the linocuts found in this book were made. Ref: Bloch 909. (Later editions of this work, the editions of 1988 and 2020, were digitally copied without any impression marks, used lesser quality inks, were on inferior paper and greatly reduced in quality.) Condition of the book: Spine worn and faded. Prelim pages and the first four linocuts loose due to the fragility of the perfect binding used for this work. Slipcase worn, marked and rubbed. Neat ownership stamp to the half-title else pages very nice and clean. Condition of the linocuts: Strong impression marks. Very faint foxing to the margins else fine, tight, bright, clean copies. Scarce in any form and a very good copy overall as it is frquently broken for its stunning plates. Includes the original price label from Parker and Son Limited of 27 Broad Street, Oxford. Dated 15.7.65, the price was 378/-, the equivalent of £420 today, reflecting how sought-after the work had become in the two years since it was originally published.

Pablo Picasso – Linocuts – 1963: A Brief Overview

Pablo Picasso: Linocuts, published by Thames and Hudson in 1963, is a landmark art book devoted entirely to Picasso’s work in the linocut medium. Issued while Picasso was still alive and creatively active, it was among the first serious publications to treat linocut not as a subsidiary or illustrative technique, but as a central and innovative component of Picasso’s late graphic practice.

The book reflects Thames and Hudson’s distinctive mid-twentieth-century approach: combining scholarly authority, technical explanation, and high production standards in a format accessible to both specialists and informed general readers.

Historical context

Picasso and linocut

Picasso turned decisively to linocut in the late 1950s, at a point when his reputation was already unassailable. Linoleum, long associated with schools, posters, and utilitarian printing, appealed to him precisely because of its humble status and physical resistance.

Rather than treating linocut as a simplified substitute for woodcut, Picasso reconceived it as a radically modern, experimental medium, capable of sustaining complex colour, historical dialogue, and painterly force.

The 1963 book captures this moment of rediscovery and reinvention almost in real time.

Scope and structure of the book

Focus

The volume concentrates on:

• Picasso’s linocuts from roughly 1958 to the early 1960s
• His technical innovations in colour printing
• The relationship between linocut, painting, and drawing in his late work

It is not a catalogue raisonné. Instead, it functions as a critical and technical study, using selected works to demonstrate method, intention, and artistic significance.

Technical innovation: the reduction linocut

A single block, many colours

At the heart of the book is Picasso’s most important technical breakthrough: the reduction linocut.

Instead of using a separate block for each colour, Picasso:

1. Cut and printed the lightest colour from a single linoleum block
2. Carved further into the same block
3. Printed progressively darker or more dominant colours over the same sheet

Each stage destroyed the previous state of the image, making revision impossible.

Artistic consequences

The book stresses how this method introduced:

• Irreversibility
• Heightened risk
• A sense of time and sequence embedded in the image

Linocut became, for Picasso, a form of committed action, closer to painting in its decisiveness than to traditional printmaking.

Subjects and imagery

Recurring themes

The linocuts reproduced in the book fall into several broad groups:

• Portraits, often monumental heads reduced to essential forms
• Still lifes, simplified into bold spatial arrangements
• Mythological and bacchanalian figures, echoing classical antiquity
• Dialogues with Old Masters, notably Cranach, Manet, and Velázquez

These works are characterised by compression rather than detail, favouring force, rhythm, and mass.

Style and visual language

Line and form

The book shows how Picasso used linocut to:

• Transform line into boundary and structure
• Eliminate modelling in favour of flat, assertive planes
• Emphasise the physical presence of the image

Faces become masks; bodies become signs. The goal is not likeness but authority.

Colour

Colour linocut is central to the book’s argument. Picasso’s colour is:

• Saturated
• Often deliberately discordant
• Used to build form, not decorate it

The reproductions demonstrate how colour operates architectonically, giving weight and tension to the image.

Relationship to Picasso’s late style

The 1963 publication situates linocuts firmly within Picasso’s late period, countering the notion that his later years were merely repetitive or indulgent.

Instead, the book presents linocut as:

• A site of renewed invention
• A means of confronting art history directly
• A rejection of refinement in favour of raw clarity

The medium’s resistance suited Picasso’s late desire to strip art down to its essentials.

Art-historical dialogue

Old Masters reworked

One of the book’s most significant contributions is its discussion of Picasso’s linocuts after Old Masters, particularly Cranach. These works are not copies, but transformations under pressure.

The book frames this practice as:

• Competitive rather than reverential
• A test of whether historical form can survive radical simplification
• Evidence of Picasso’s continued engagement with the Western canon

Linocut’s bluntness becomes a tool for historical confrontation.

Authority and scholarship

As a Thames and Hudson publication from 1963, the book carries:

• Proximity to Picasso’s working practice
• Technical accuracy grounded in observation
• Early but serious critical framing of linocut as major art

While later scholarship has expanded the field, this volume remains authoritative as a foundational text, documenting Picasso’s linocuts before they were fully absorbed into art-historical orthodoxy.

Physical and bibliographical character

Typical features of the 1963 edition include:

• Large-format presentation
• High-quality colour and monochrome plates for the period
• Clean, modern design consistent with Thames and Hudson’s post-war identity

Today, the book is valued both as a scholarly resource and as a collectable artefact of twentieth-century art publishing.

Critical importance

Pablo Picasso: Linocuts played a key role in:

• Elevating linocut within modern printmaking
• Reassessing Picasso’s late graphic work
• Influencing later artists interested in reduction printing and material risk

It helped redefine linocut from a secondary craft into a site of high artistic seriousness.

Concluding assessment

The 1963 Thames and Hudson Pablo Picasso: Linocuts captures Picasso at a moment of uncompromising clarity. It shows an artist embracing a resistant, irreversible medium to pursue force, speed, and historical confrontation. Far from marginal, the linocuts emerge as works of conviction—images made where decision outweighs correction.

The book remains essential not only for understanding Picasso’s linocuts, but for understanding how modern art can reanimate “minor” techniques into major statements.

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