PABLO PICASSO

La Celestine is a subset of sixty-six prints within the larger series created in 1968, known as 347 Suite. It was created partially in reaction to the conceptual, theoretical, history-rejecting art that was gaining popularity in the 1960s – and the resistance to this youthful project likely made Picasso feel quite old, since he was once a leader in such movements. Rather contrarily, for this suite Picasso turned once more to mythology, this time to Spanish folklore. The La Celestine series takes up a character named Célestina from a Renaissance-aged fable, Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. Formerly a prostitute, she has become the elderly, greedy owner of a brothel, and a meddler in the town’s love affairs. Célestina is always depicted as haggardly, almost monstrously, old; her withered body matches her barren soul. She could be understood as a reflection of Picasso’s aging anxieties. In his late 80s, the artist was worried equally about his place in the art world, his absent sexuality, and his creative potency.

Perhaps as a way of working out his troubled psyche, in this series he loosed his full arsenal of technical ability – the prints are done as etchings, drypoints, copper engravings, as well as in the aquatint techniques he’d learned in Roger Lacourière’s workshop. These represent a lifetime of experimentation, mastery, and, more than anything, a lifelong search for new means of expression. This pursuit never dwindled, even as – or it could be said, especially as – his art began to contemplate the predicament of the aging soul.