Minotaure mourant et jeune femme pitoyable

Etching on Montval paper, with Picasso watermark and “Galatea” watermark, from the edition of 260 copies printed by Lacouriere, Paris.

The work is signed in pencil at lower right. Bloch 198, Baer 366.

The Vollard Suite has a particular origin and a story to tell. The Spanish artist, in fact, executed the 100 intaglio prints that comprise it on commission from gallery owner and modern art publisher Ambroise Vollard, who envisioned publishing them in an editorial product reserved for an exclusive audience. In Paris and at the Château de Boisgeloup-a country estate near the French capital that Picasso had acquired in 1930-the author of Guernica devoted himself to the commission with particular vigor and élan. In these panels he explored complex and potentially inexhaustible themes, such as ambition, fear, the desire for immortality, moral and physical fallibility, male sexuality, and obsession. With references also to classicism and Greek mythology, the works of the Vollard Suite are considered on a par with “an extraordinary autobiographical document,” capable of opening a gateway into Picasso's personal life story, giving shape to his reflections as a middle-aged man - and artist -, his desires, and the aspirations also linked to his relationship with the young Marie-Thérèse Walter. The car accident in which Vollard lost his life in 1939 marked a setback for the project; at the subsequent outbreak of World War II the prints remained unpublished. The Vollard Suite did not acquire completed form until the early 1950s, when it was given to the presses under the name that made it known.

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