Pablo Picasso’s Fumer, 1964, an aquatint and soft-ground etching in colors on Richard de Bas wove paper. Signed in pencil by Picasso, it is a vivid example of his late-period printmaking, where he fused spontaneity, color, and line into playful yet psychologically charged portraits.

The composition is a portrait, likely a self-referential image of Picasso smoking, but rendered in his characteristically abstract and fragmented style. The figure’s face is built up of vibrant, broken planes of color—pink, yellow, green, and grey strokes that intersect to form facial features. The nose is reduced to a simple vertical yellow line, splitting the face in two, while the eyes—one circular and one almond-shaped—stare outward with a piercing, almost eccentric intensity.

The hand, holding a cigarette, is simplified into angular red and pink contours, with a striking green stroke to indicate the cigarette. Picasso suggests rather than describes form, relying on rhythm and placement of color to evoke gesture. The upper part of the head, with scalloped green lines suggesting cropped hair, contrasts with the flat grey shading, reminding us of Picasso’s lifelong fascination with the tension between line, color, and volume.

The use of aquatint combined with soft-ground etching allowed Picasso to achieve a texture resembling crayon or pastel drawing, giving the work a childlike immediacy. The colors appear bright and almost playful, yet the intensity of the gaze and the fractured arrangement of features convey a sense of psychological depth. This marriage of spontaneity and control exemplifies Picasso’s late printmaking practice, where he pushed traditional techniques into new expressive territories.

At once whimsical and profound, Fumer captures Picasso’s fascination with both the act of representation and the act of living. Smoking—a casual, everyday gesture—becomes monumental, transformed into an icon of presence and personality. The work blends humor, immediacy, and intensity, embodying Picasso’s belief that even the most ordinary subjects could be endlessly reimagined through the lens of abstraction.

Fumer (1964) is a colorful aquatint and soft-ground etching on Richard de Bas wove paper, signed in pencil by Picasso. The portrait depicts a figure with angular, expressive features, rendered in vibrant strokes of pink, yellow, green, and blue. The hand holds a cigarette, simplified into gestural lines. The work merges abstraction with figuration, highlighting Picasso’s playful yet deeply psychological exploration of the human face during his late career.

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