1971 Modern Cubist Contour Line Etching of a Dressing Circus Ballerina Edition 42/50 by Pablo Picasso

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Modern Cubist etching by the iconic artist Pablo Picasso. Titled "Au cirque. Écuyère se chaussant dans les coulisses et clown … Read more Modern Cubist etching by the iconic artist Pablo Picasso. Titled "Au cirque. Écuyère se chaussant dans les coulisses et clown au trapèze," the work features a central female ballerina figure dressing for her performance being watched by a clown on a trapeze. Signed and and editioned along front lower margin. Currently hung in a silver floating frame.

Dimensions Without Frame: H 14.5 in. x W 18 in.

Artist Biography: One of the most prolific and revolutionary artists the world has ever seen, Pablo Picasso had a tremendous impact on the development of 20th-century modern art. Although he is best known for his association with the Cubist movement, which he founded with Georges Braque, Picasso’s influence extends to Surrealism, neoclassicism and Expressionism.

“Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction,” the Spanish artist proclaimed. In Picasso's Cubist paintings, he emphasizes the two-dimensionality of the canvas, breaking with conventions regarding perspective, foreshortening and proportion. Picasso was inspired by Iberian and African tribal art. One of his most famous pre-Cubist works is Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), a painting considered immoral and shocking at the time for its depiction of nude women whose faces resemble Iberian tribal masks.

Picasso made many portraits in this style, most often of the women in his life, their expressively colored faces composed of geometric shards of surface planes. In Woman in a Hat (Olga), 1935, he painted his first wife as an assemblage of abstract forms, leaving the viewer to decipher the subject through the contrasting colors and shapes. Picasso was a tireless artist, creating more than 20,000 paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics and sculptures. Tracing his life’s work reveals the progression of modern art, on which he had an unparalleled influence. See less