Sueño y Mentira de Franco I & II

Details

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)
Sueño y Mentira de Franco I & II
two etchings with aquatint, 1937, on Montval laid paper, with the accompanying poem by the artist, each with the stamped signature (as issued), numbered 41/850 (there were also editions of thirty on Japon ancien and 150 on Chine), published by the artist, Paris, 1937, the full sheets, with deckle edges on three sides, discoloration in the lower left margin and at the sheet edges from old tape, lacking the original folder, framed
Plate 317 x 420 mm., Sheet 386 x 570 mm. (each) (2)
(3)

Literature

Bloch 297-298; Baer 615-616; Cramer books 28

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Alice L'Estrange

alestrange@christies.com +44 (0)20 7752 3083

Lot Essay

Sueno y mentira de Franco, the 'Dream and Lie of Franco', was created in 1937 in protest of Franco's coup d'etat a year earlier. Rather than simply condemn the unlawfulness of this regime, Picasso chose to at once ridicule the general and expose the suffering of the people in a series of 18 cartoon-line scenes printed from two plates. The comic-strip character of the prints derived from Picasso's original idea, which was to produce a series of postcards or leaflets, to be widely disseminated amongst the Spanish people. The result is not a narrative as such, but a series of loosely connected images.

The edition of two prints with a surrealist poem by the artist was offered for sale at the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 World Fair in Paris, where Picasso exhibited Guernica for the first time. The prints also include the first emanation of 'La Femme qui pleure' ('The Weeping Woman'), arguably the artist's greatest print.

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