Painter Sketching and His Nude Model Wearing a Hat

Title: Peintre dessinant et modèle nu au chapeau

Painter Sketching and His Nude Model Wearing a Hat

Date: February 1965, Mougins

Medium: Original linocut printed in two colours, black on white, from a single block on Arches watermarked paper

Signed in pencil by the artist

Edition: 132/160

There were also approximately 35 artist’s proofs, some signed, and five impressions printed on Arches wove paper, washed in black India ink and rinsed to reverse the tonal relationship

Printer and Publisher: Arnéra, Vallauris, France

Size: 620 × 750 mm, paper size

References:

Bloch 1194

Baer 1357.Ba

Wofsy L-183

Curtiss, Picasso: Passion and Creation – The Last Thirty Years, Boca Raton Museum of Art, 2001

Online Picasso Project 65:019

Peintre dessinant et modèle nu au chapeau presents one of Picasso’s most enduring subjects: the relationship between artist and model. Created in 1965 at his home in Mougins, the composition captures a private studio moment. A painter concentrates on his drawing while a nude model wearing a hat poses nearby.

Although the figures occupy the same space, they remain psychologically distinct. Each is absorbed in their own role within the creative act. The tension lies not in overt interaction but in the charged stillness between observation and embodiment.

Carved from a single block and printed in black and white, the work demonstrates Picasso’s extraordinary command of reduction linocut technique. The white lines cut from the black field create a luminous clarity. The result is direct, intimate and emotionally restrained.

The theme of painter and model runs throughout Picasso’s career and becomes especially prominent in his later years. These scenes function as autobiographical meditations on creativity, desire, ageing and artistic identity.

The model’s hat introduces theatricality. Hats in Picasso’s late imagery often suggest performance, disguise and shifting identity. The studio becomes a stage where looking, drawing and being seen merge into a single psychological exchange.

Rather than presenting a conventional life drawing session, Picasso distils the encounter into symbolic form. The artist becomes both creator and witness. The model becomes both muse and mirror.

By the mid 1960s Picasso had fully reinvented the linocut medium. Across his lifetime he created only around 150 linocuts, making works from this period relatively rare within his vast output.

The Mougins linocuts are characterised by bold carving, flattened space and graphic immediacy. Cubist fragmentation remains present yet the handling is freer and more spontaneous than his early modernist experiments.

At this time Picasso was living with Jacqueline Roque, his wife and constant companion. Her presence profoundly shaped the emotional tenor of his late work. Many painter and model compositions from this period are interpreted as symbolic dialogues between artist and muse.

During the mid 1960s Picasso was producing:

– Large scale painter and model canvases

– Erotic studio scenes

– Expressive late portraits of Jacqueline

– A series of experimental linocuts exploring myth, identity and creative tension

These works demonstrate an artist working with urgency and confidence well into his eighties.

The 1960s saw Picasso internationally celebrated as a living master. Younger artists were redefining contemporary art, yet Picasso continued to produce work that felt radically alive.

His late studio scenes reject nostalgia. Instead they affirm creative vitality in old age. These works challenged assumptions about artistic decline and reinforced Picasso’s reputation as a continually evolving force within modern art.

This work was printed from a single linoleum block using a reduction process. Successive carving stages removed material to define light and space. The economy of colour heightens the graphic intensity.

The contrast between black field and carved white line produces sculptural depth and psychological immediacy. The simplicity of means belies the technical control required.

Picasso’s Mougins linocuts are now recognised as central to his late graphic oeuvre. They demonstrate how he transformed a traditionally modest print medium into a vehicle for monumental emotional expression.

Referenced in major catalogue raisonnés and museum exhibitions, these works occupy a key position in twentieth century printmaking.

With an edition of 160 and strong catalogue documentation, Peintre dessinant et modèle nu au chapeau represents a significant example from Picasso’s late period.

Collectors value these Mougins linocuts for their expressive freedom, autobiographical depth and relative scarcity within Picasso’s printmaking output.

This work offers intellectual richness, emotional intimacy and strong visual impact. It stands as a museum quality acquisition firmly embedded within the canon of modern art.