"Picasso: Encounters" explores Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) interest in and experimentation with large-scale printmaking throughout his career, challenging the notion of Picasso as an artist alone with his craft. The exhibition includes important paintings on loan from the Musée national Picasso–Paris. The exhibition addresses his expansive formal vocabulary, the narrative preoccupations that drove his creative process, the often-neglected issue of the collaboration inherent in print production, and the muses that inspired him, including Fernande Olivier, Olga Khokhlova, Dora Maar, Françoise Gilot, and Jacqueline Roque.

The exhibition begins with Picasso’s seminal Self-Portrait (1901) from his Blue Period as a representation of the artist’s mythic isolation. The painting, on loan from the Musée national Picasso–Paris, is followed by thirty-five of the artist’s most important graphic achievements, ranging from the Clark’s rare impression of The Frugal Repast (1904)—Picasso’s first major statement in printmaking—to Ecce Homo, after Rembrandt (1970), executed three years before his death.

Picasso continuously mined his personal life for subject matter. The exhibition includes the captivating 1923 drypoint portrait of his first wife Olga, the playful image of his daughter Paloma (1952), and the heartrending aquatint of his embittered partner Françoise Gilot (1952).

The exhibition also explores the intertwined narrative threads of the Minotauromachia (1934), The Large Bullfight (1935), and Weeping Woman I (1937). Four Weeping Woman prints are accompanied by Portrait of Dora Maar (1937), the revered oil painting on loan from the Musée national Picasso–Paris. Maar was Picasso’s muse and served as his model for the paintings, drawings, and prints of weeping women produced in the 1930s. Picasso’s final years, during which he transformed the compositions of Old Masters from Rembrandt to Cranach to Manet, are represented by linocuts such as Portrait of a Young Girl, after Cranach the Younger, II (1958) and Luncheon on the Grass, after Manet (1968).

Picasso: Encounters is organized by the Clark Art Institute, with the exceptional support of the Musée national Picasso–Paris. Additional support for the exhibition is provided by Margaret and Richard Kronenberg and Marilyn and Ron Walter.