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Explore Picasso’s Last Great Creative Outpouring at Picasso and the Progressive Proof: Linocut Prints from a Private Collection

On view at the VBMA September 13, 2025–January 4, 2026

Explore the printmaking work of renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso when the Vero Beach Museum of Art hosts the nationally touring exhibition, Picasso and the Progressive Proof: Linocut Prints from a Private Collection, from Saturday, September 13, 2025, through Sunday, January 4, 2026. The exhibition, organized by the Townsend Art Advisory LLC, illuminates Picasso’s conceptual and technical innovations during his last great creative outpouring.

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), one of the most influential artists in history, was not only a prolific painter and sculptor but also a prodigious printmaker. In the late 1940s, Picasso settled in Vallauris, France, a small town outside Cannes, where he worked with a young local printer, Hidalgo Arnéra (1922–2007), for four years before publishing his first linocut print. In collaboration with his printers, Picasso created over 2,400 prints throughout his career.

Presenting broad themes that Picasso explored throughout his career, the exhibition highlights three recurring subjects through a selection of prints. The first is his ongoing dialogue and competition with the Old Masters. The second theme reflects his Spanish heritage, particularly through depictions of the corrida, or bullfight. The third centers on his fascination with mythology and Classical history.

Three prints—Portrait of a Young Woman after Cranach the Younger II, Pique II, and Bacchanal with Kid Goat and Onlooker—along with their various proofs, offer insight into Picasso’s distinctive printmaking techniques and his groundbreaking contributions to the medium. From collaborative notations, explorations of color, repurposing of poster paper, and reduction printing techniques, Picasso reinvented yet another art form–the linocut.

The exhibition is made possible by Presenting Sponsors: The Yela “Peter” and Derek Fowler Endowment for Acquisitions and Exhibitions, the Patricia M. Patten Endowment, and the Estate of Glee and Robert Ries Endowment and Exhibition Sponsor: Friends of the VBMA Endowment.

Picasso and the Progressive Proof was organized by Townsend Art Advisory LLC.

This press license grants the right to distribute images of Portrait of a Young Woman after Cranach the Younger II (trial proof of all five blocks), (detail), 1958, for the sole purpose of inclusion in a press kit for print and digital news reports and reviews of the exhibition Picasso and the Progressive Proof (the “Exhibition”), to be held at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. For clarity, the rights granted do not include, and ARS is not granting, the right to use the Work(s) in Licensee’s own announcements or social media without ARS’s prior written consent. No cover uses are permitted without prior authorization.