Pablo Picasso

Four burin etchings, 1947, fine impressions before steel-facing, each signed in pencil and inscribed 'Bon à Tirer', the 'bon à tirer' before the numbered edition of 250,  B. 470 and B. 471 on Pur Fil Marais, B. 468 and B. 469 on Pur Fil Marais with the watermark as noted by Baer, four illustrations for the book "Dos Contes" by Ramón Reventós, framed (4 prints)

The prints are in good condition with the full sheets. Pale mat-stain and occasional unobtrusive stray ink and surface soiling. The verso, with pale, unobtrusive discoloration and two yellow areas of discoloration. (Occasional soft handling creases only visible in raking light).
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In 1947, in defiance of Franco and in memoriam to his childhood friend and author, Ramón Reventós, Picasso contributed four illustrations to the republishing of Dos Contes. Bridgette Baer noted that Picasso did not sign any prints from the edition of 250 and that only one set of four was printed before steel-facing.

During 1898 and 1899, the Reventós brothers, Ramón and Jacint (Cinto), were members of Picasso’s Quatre Gats group in Barcelona, which was modeled after the famous Parisian cabaret, La Chat Noir. ¹  Ramón, who earned his living as a spice merchant, was an aspiring writer but never published beyond minor regional publications.  Cinto, a medical student, was involved in the Barcelona avant-garde by way of his father, Isidre, a prominent architect, theatre and art critic.  Isidre Reventós sat on the jury that admitted Picasso’s now lost First Communion to an 1896 exhibition, one of Picasso’s first public showings.  According to John Richardson, Picasso reminisced that the Reventós’ house as where “everything began”² and remembered the two brothers fondly throughout his life. 

During the Nazi occupation of Paris, in defiance of Franco’s brutal suppression of Catalan and in memoriam to Ramón, who died in 1923, Picasso decided to publicize Raventós’ work.  Picasso hand-copied two stories from Dos Contes at the Bibliothèque Nationale and suggested that Jaume Canyameres, a Catalan publisher, publish the tales with four illustrations by himself.

In El Centaure Picador, the narrator buys the last Centaur, whose mother dies during childbirth as his father descends into hell due to sorrow.  Hereafter, this mythological being, a lover of classical literature and beautiful women, shares the life of the narrator.  Picasso depicts the Centaur’s birth and the father’s descent into hell in the first plate (top left above).  In the second illustration, the Centaur pulls a cart, teaches the narrator’s children and as a Picador; the Centaur as polymath (top right above).

The second tale from the book, El Capvespre d’un Faune, tells the tale of a Faun who wishes to die of regret and – since only those who speak Catalan truly understand regret – he leaves Tuscany for Catalonia, where he becomes a man, learns to speak Catalan and, after many adventures, finally dies of regret when his love leaves him.  Picasso follows the same format at the first story. On a single page, Picasso depicts the faun playing the pan flute (bottom left).  The second illustration depicts the faun, now a goatherd, locking horns with his charge, posing for the artist (a common theme throughout Picasso’s oeuvre) spurring a rejuvenation of pagan art in Catalonia, and finally, the death of the faun (bottom right).

¹Picasso executed several portraits of Ramón Raventós.  Ramón is pictured smoking a pipe in each.

²John Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881 – 1906, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2012, page 138.