With its fabulously vibrant colours – fiery red, citron yellow and zingy apple green – Picasso’s Still Life under the Lamp appears in almost every book there is on the artist. Thus, it was with particular pleasure that the British Museum announced on Monday that it had acquired a unique set of proofs showing how he arrived at the final image.
The museum said it had managed to buy two important sets of Picasso linocuts after a successful £500,000 fundraising campaign.
“It is incredibly exciting,” said museum curator Stephen Coppel. “The two sets of linocut proofs show Picasso’s creative process step by step. You really do feel like you’re looking over Picasso’s shoulders as he is working on these incredible images.”
Picasso was in his early 80s when he worked at night-time on the linocuts that resulted in the 1962 prints Still Life under the Lamp and Jacqueline Reading, for
Article source: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jan/06/british-museum-buys-picasso-still-life-linocuts