Picasso’s sexual relationships impacted upon his artistic output throughout his life. Sometimes the impact was implicit, such as a change in style or palette; other times it was explicit, as his new lover replaced the old as the female subject of his work. Such explicit changes occurred in the late 1930s and 1940s, as first Marie-Thérèse was replaced as his muse by Dora Maar, who in turn was replaced by Françoise Gilot. Maar was the subject of many of Picasso’s prints and drawings in the early 1940s, including Portrait and Six Fantastic Stories. Gilot was the subject of much of his work later in the decade, including Françoise with a Bow in her Hair and Portrait of Françoise with Wavy Hair.
It was in the 1940s that Picasso began to really explore the possibilities and push the boundaries of printing technique. Two series of lithographs, The Bull and Woman in an Armchair, both work outside the usual conventions of the art form, as does another lithograph from 1950, Paloma and Claude, Vallauris, in which Picasso used his fingers to achieve a soft, playful quality entirely appropriate to the subject of his two young children.
Into the 1950s, lithography continued to be Picasso’s favoured printing technique. Around this time, he would often adopt an idiosyncratic style involving a complex interweaving of lines, and the shapes within those marks picked out in flat colour. An example of a lithograph incorporating this style is The Egyptian.
By 1953, Picasso’s relationship with Gilot had deteriorated and the artist had moved to Provence with his new lover, Jacqueline Roque, who is the subject of Jacqueline Reading and Jacqueline with a Hair Band.
