A colourful Picasso print in red, green, yellow and black showing a lightbulb from a ceiling lamp lighting up a table with apples and a goblet on it.

Picasso
printmaker

Exhibition / 7 November 2024 – 30 March 2025

Members free

7 November 2024 – 30 March 2025

Daily: 10.00–17.00 (Fridays 20.30)
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Room 90

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Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was one of the most inventive and influential talents ever to explore the medium of print.

In addition to his many paintings, sculptures and drawings, the Málaga-born artist made over 2,400 prints during his career. From his early years as an artist in Paris to his old age in the South of France, printmaking offered Picasso the opportunity to develop ideas, tell stories and embark on new creative adventures.

This exhibition offers insights into Picasso's life through his art, including his complex relationships with women and his partnerships with printers, publishers and other artists. Spanning his entire career, it follows his engagement with different printmaking techniques and his changing approaches to making art.

The British Museum holds by far the UK's largest and most representative collection of Picasso's prints. The exhibition features prints made in the early 1900s, before and after Picasso's breakthrough painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), which paved the way for Cubism. It also includes a group of prints from the Vollard Suite, a series of 100 etchings made in the 1930s that shows the influence of classical art on Picasso's work and reflects his tumultuous personal life.

Picasso's focus on lithography and then linocut printing following the Second World War is explored, as is his move to the South of France, marking a change of lifestyle that is evident in his work. Thematic threads include the circus, the bullfight, love and sex, and Picasso's interactions on paper with artists from the past. The exhibition ends with a selection from the 347 Suite, named after the number of prints in the series, which Picasso completed aged 86 in 1968, in a remarkable burst of late creativity. 

Highlights

  • Print showing a gaunt man and woman at a table with a bottle, glasses and an empty plate

    'The frugal meal'

  • Print showing frogs on waterlily pads. One frog leaps towards a space on a pad

    'Frogs'

  • Colourful abstract print showing black bulls with wings leaping over yellow suns or sunflowers

    'Leaping bulls'

  • Colourful abstract print of fruit and a vessel under lamplight

    'Still life under the lamp'

  • Print in greys and blacks against a sepia background of a hen with feathery plumage on her chest and tail

    'The hen'

  • Abstract portrait of a woman with blue angular headdress, a curved face and a swoop of black hair

    'Head of a woman'

  • Abstract print in black and white with charcoal spirals and a figure

    'Figure'

  • Print of a tree swirling in a storm, as figures run towards a church

    'Tree in the storm, with flight towards a church'

  • Abstract print of figures surrounding a beast that is half man half bull, while stars twinkle in the sky

    'Blind minotaur being led by a little girl in the night'

  • Abstract print in brown, black, terracotta and plum, showing creatures with limbs and horns

    'The Pike II'

  • Abstract line drawing of a woman resting with her eyes closed while another sits cross-legged

    'Women on the beach'

  • Print depicting a large female form wrapping her arms around two children who are sitting cross-legged and drawing on paper

    'The little artist'

Events

Ticket information

Members

Members don't need to book to visit Picasso: printmaker. Please show your Membership card to gain entry. If you're visiting before your Membership card arrives, bring your Membership purchase confirmation email to the Membership Desk in the Great Court on the day of your visit. We'll then issue a temporary card to access your on-site benefits.

Please see our Visiting as a Member page for more information on visiting the Museum.

Access

Exhibition supporters

Supported by

Frederick Mulder Ltd 
ARTscapades
The Michael Marks Charitable Trust
Hamish Parker 
P F Charitable Trust 
IFPDA Foundation 

We are also grateful to Hamish Parker for funding a modern print curatorial post and his extensive support towards Picasso print acquisitions.

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