The Museo Picasso Málaga is presenting a selection of its print collection which forms part of the original donation made by Christine Ruiz-Picasso. 45 works are arranged according to technique, allowing the visitor an overview of Picasso’s use of the widest variety of techniques, including drypoint, etching, linocut, sugar-lift aquatint and lithography. Together they reveal an artist who continually experimented in the field of printmaking with a freedom characteristic of all his work.

The selection includes a number works not previously exhibited at the Museum. Portrait of Jacqueline in a Ruff (6 July 1962) is a linocut whose title refers to the type of collar worn by Picasso’s wife, characteristic of Spanish dress at the time of Philip II. The artist’s style, however, is innovative rather than backward-looking: instead of using a different linoleum block for each colour, he mixed black and cream ink on the same block in order to achieve the blue-grey colour of the face and some of the folds which give relief to the ruff. This impression was printed by Hidalgo Arnéra.

The Museum is fortunate to possess three impressions of Apples (1914). These three still-life etchings on copperplate combine traditional and innovative methods of representation. Their dual character, fusing classicism and modernity in equal measure, make them fascinating case studies of realistic and aesthetic perception. Of the nine original impressions printed by the artist, four were printed on Ingres paper. Of these, three correspond to the present impressions while the fourth is in the Musée Picasso, Paris.