Word: picassos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When summoned to Pablo Picasso's Riviera villa last March, Paris Printer Aldo Crommelynck packed only one clean shirt. There had been many previous summonses in the 20 years that Crommelynck, 37, and his brother Piero, 34, had been privileged to print the master's occasional engravings. The brothers even found it worthwhile to keep a small printing press in an atelier near Picasso's house, enabling the impatient artist to view proofs without delay. From those earlier calls, Crommelynck fully expected to run off proofs of one or possibly two new engravings-all Picasso ever seemed...
...never did pay to take Picasso for granted...
Crommelynck found that the 87-year-old Picasso had launched into a fury of sustained creativity, turning out etchings-and nothing else-at the astonishing rate of almost two a day. The printer resignedly settled into a state of semi-residence as the artist worked on and on, from March into early October. As remarkable as the demanding pace was the subject to which Picasso addressed himself. At a time of life when sex is little more than a dim memory for most men, he was lustily scratching out on copper one erotic scene after another, never hesitating to boldly...
...Picasso's themes, that of artist and model, is omnipresent. In one engraving after another, men representing painters-or voyeurs-stare at shamelessly naked women; occasionally they indulge in intercourse with their ever-compliant models, palette and brushes still in hand. Reflecting the artist's Spanish heritage, a whole series of moody prints shows grandees on horseback abducting maidens. Satyrs abound...
Sapone says that a few of his painter-customers "dress like bourgeois gentlemen" and concedes that he has trouble satisfying them. Joan Miró never did accept his suggestions for a suit, and Jacques Villon confided: "Sapone, I'm really too old for you to dress me." As Picasso told him: "Your suits are like my paintings. In the beginning people found them strange and extravagant. Now they admire them...