Readings.

The technique and the innovation

Originally abandoned because of its complexity, the technique of deriving prints from linoleum regained the interest of Pablo Picasso at the end of the 50’s. Cutting and colouring involved highly refined skills as each colour requires a separate block and coloured prints could be realized only sequencing several blocks one atop of the other. But Picasso saw what no other artist did before him: instead of associating each colour to its singular block, he invented a technique, later called reduction, that allowed to print the desired representation from just one block. Although technically not much more complex than other techniques, the reduction method requires a prodigious imagination as each colour is printed one after the other cutting the same block, starting from the lightest to the darkest. Anticipating the impact of each modification on the whole composition becomes imperative and only a handful of gifted artists could face the challenge, but the creative liberation that followed gave origin to some of the most luminous and precious masterworks ever to be printed by an artist. Pablo Picasso mastered cutting linoleum like no else in the history of arts and eventually, of the about 2,500 graphic works of his, 150 were linocuts. Around 100, made between 1959 and 1962.