'From Picasso's Sketchbook' After Pablo Picasso, 1960 Abrams Inc, New York, Carnet De La Californie

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A stone lithograph from the first edition of 'Picasso's Sketchbook (Carnet de la California, 1955-1956)' which was limited to 1000 … Read more A stone lithograph from the first edition of 'Picasso's Sketchbook (Carnet de la California, 1955-1956)' which was limited to 1000 copies. Dated, in the design, November 15, 1955 and numbered 1. Unsigned. Accompanied with a copy of the inside cover page and colophone with publishing information.

Around 1959, Editions Cercle d’Art published Carnet de la Californie, a facsimile of a sketchbook that Picasso worked on at his house in Cannes, La Californie. Printed at Mourlot Studios in Paris, this edition was prepared for the American market by publisher Harry N. Abrams, New York (1960).

With thanks to Claire Lui and the Guggenheim for the below:
Carnet de la Californie sheds light on Picasso’s interests and focus at the time. Over and over he returned to the same themes—copies of Old Masters, and drawings of a woman in Turkish clothing, which may have been variations for his painting Jacqueline in Turkish Costume (1955), a portrait of his second wife, Jacqueline Roque.

In 1954, the year before he started this sketchbook, Picasso began a series of paintings that were inspired by Eugene Delacroix’s painting The Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834). Les Femmes d’Alger (1954–1955), Picasso’s eventual series of 15 paintings, were marked by the recent death of Henri Matisse, whose own work and interests colored much of Picasso’s work during this period. Picasso often depicted Jacqueline as an odalisque, a favorite theme of Matisse’s, and these sketches are a form of homage to Picasso’s late friend and rival.

Most often, though, the studio space in La Californie is his subject. Picasso drew the room in black and white, in color, with paint, and with pencils, drawing out variation after variation. The same elements reappear throughout the book—a bird statue, grand arched windows with a hint of the room’s ornate detailing, palm trees with gracefully curved branches, and even the same chairs, including a Thonet rocking chair that can also be seen in many of the artist’s paintings. Picasso told his biographer, Pierre Daix, “I thought so much about Les Femmes d’Alger that I bought La Californie.”

Carnet de la Californie was printed at Mourlot Studios, a famed lithographic print shop that specialized in artist collaborations—Picasso himself made more than four hundred lithographs at Mourlot between 1945 and 1969. Their reproduction of the sketchbook showcases the printmakers’ prowess: These lithographers, skilled at a printing process that had fallen out of favor during the 19th century due to the difficulty of using a stone plate to offset the image, were able to reproduce the brush strokes and pressure of the colored pencils with an accuracy that makes the book feel like an original. They even managed to capture the impressions from the pastels and paint that transferred from one page to the other when the notebook was closed.

The sketchbook was originally created for an audience of one: Picasso himself. The beautifully reproduced notebook is an unusual chance, for the rest of us, to observe the artist’s daily practice—a studio tour of his mind.
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The foreword of 'Picasso's Sketchbook (Carnet de la California, 1955-1956)', written by Georges Boudaille, says the following about Picasso's drawings of November 15, 1955:

The lightness of the first drawing done under this date makes us suddenly aware of Picasso's very special use of color. Engrossed in our unusual plastic venture, we had scarcely time to note that his color has so far been very ordinary. Set off from each other by large white areas, his colors are applied like those of a child using crayons.

The new lightness of tone (particularly marked in the lavender, which seems to soak into the paper) and the fineness of line endow this indoor scene, by now familiar to us, with a kind of unreality. We are now less interested in the drawing than in the fascinating contrast between the green and the yellow defined by a violet outline, in the silhouette of the stuffed bird now bordered with orange and inexplicably obsessive in character, and in the red lines that suggest the outline of a table leg - the only surviving trace of the table.

In the third drawing, we are back in the familiar atmosphere of the Studio, rapidly sketched in blue tones, and we begin to wonder whether the twilight has dissolved the colors or whether Picasso wanted to try the subject in monochrome. See less