The John Szoke Gallery presents The Printmaker of Modern Life: Picasso Lithographs, a revelatory exhibition exploring Pablo Picasso’s prolific work in the medium of lithography.

Lithographs differ from other print techniques starting from the beginning, where the artist “draws” his image either directly or through a transfer process onto a large, heavy stone with a greasy crayon-like pencil. The process of finalizing the image is not quick, nor is it done on the fly – not quite an image sketched in the park.

Atelier Mourlot was equally impressed with Picasso’s prodigious talent for grasping new forms of graphic art, calling his urgency, his drive to mastery, “merciless.” He worked the poor stone from eight in the morning to eight in the evening. During that time, the studio workmen would prepare a stone, Picasso would create the image, they’d pull a number of impressions, and immediately, he would be ready to embark on a second state. And on and on. Between each state, the lithographers would need to retouch the stone. Usually, all that treatment would alter the original design, more or less rendering it indecipherable – but, the studio says, there was a potency to Picasso’s work. “Each time [he made another state] it turned out well.” The process became part of the resultant image – as our toad(Boch 585) shows. Through compulsive trial and error (multiplied by innumerable states) he forged a distinct lithographic style.