Pablo Picasso Nature morte à la pastèque (Still Life with Watermelons), 1962 exhibits a blistering yellow light beating down on fruit. The watermelon and cherries are placed on a table that is crosshatched with dark and light blue lines – creating the pattern of a cloth that covers the table. Those lines are mirrored in the light fixture hanging above the fruit. The image of the fruit is framed with yellow lines, bringing more light and warmth to the scene. The intense yellow, and the rays that stretch towards the fruit, brings with it a sense of hot summer, which is also the best time for cool, sweet watermelon to be consumed. In the heat of summer, the deliciously pink watermelon quenches the thirst of the viewer.

Most of Picasso’s linocuts consist of only two color blocks – however, Still Life with Watermelons uses 8 colors – a fact that shows Picasso’s mastery of this technique, as well as the intense care that he put into his artwork.

Created in 1962, this color linocut on Arches paper is hand-signed by Pablo Picasso (Malaga, 1881 – Mougins, 1973) in the lower right, and numbered from the edition of 160 in the lower right.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:

Pablo Picasso Still Life with Watermelons (Nature morte à la pastèque), 1962 is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the sale of the work).

1. Baer, Brigitte. Picasso: Peintre-Graveur, Tome V. Berne : Editions Kornfeld, 1989. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 1301.
2. Bloch, Georges. Picasso, Tome I: Catalogue de l'oeuvre gravé et lithographié 1904-1967. Berne: Editions Kornfeld, 1984. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 1098.
3. McVinney, L. Donald, et al. Picasso Linoleum Cuts: The Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kramer Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Random House, 1985. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 92.
4. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany this artwork.

About the Framing:

Framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, Pablo Picasso Still Life with Watermelons (Nature morte à la pastèque), 1962 is presented in a complementary moulding and finished with mats and optical grade Plexiglas.