Pablo Picasso’s Fumeur à la Cigarette Verte, 1964, an aquatint and soft-ground etching in colors on Richard de Bas wove paper, signed in pencil. It belongs to Picasso’s late series of smoking portraits, where he distilled the act of smoking into a bold and playful exploration of color, line, and abstraction.

Fumeur à la Cigarette Verte presents a stylized head drawn in fractured, energetic strokes of color. The face is built through jagged zigzags of yellow and red, punctuated with accents of green, purple, and pink. The cigarette, indicated in a vivid green line with a small circular end, acts as both a compositional anchor and the title’s focal point.

Unlike more rounded treatments of portraiture, Picasso emphasizes sharp diagonals and angular rhythms, creating a sense of dynamism and spontaneity. The hair is rendered with green zigzag strokes across the forehead and blocks of black along the sides, contrasting against areas of grey shading. Blue strokes at the bottom suggest clothing, providing balance to the energetic upper half of the composition.

Picasso exploits the unique properties of aquatint and soft-ground etching to mimic the immediacy of crayon or pastel drawing. The texture gives the impression of a freehand sketch, preserving spontaneity while integrating the layered richness of printmaking. The vivid palette—greens, yellows, pinks, reds, and blues—demonstrates Picasso’s mastery in using color to create emotional intensity rather than descriptive realism.

The “green cigarette” is more than a literal reference—it becomes a symbol of artistic play and identity. Smoking, a recurring motif in Picasso’s portraits of the 1960s, is presented here as both casual habit and expressive gesture. The abstracted features suggest a face that is both mask-like and animated, reflecting Picasso’s ongoing fascination with the dualities of human identity: presence and disguise, play and seriousness.

The energetic interplay of colors conveys vitality, suggesting not just a smoker, but a portrait of creativity itself—a person caught in the act of thought and gesture.

Fumeur à la Cigarette Verte (1964) is an aquatint and soft-ground etching in colors on Richard de Bas wove paper, signed in pencil by Pablo Picasso. The portrait depicts a stylized smoker, defined by angular strokes of yellow, red, green, pink, and blue. The cigarette, rendered in a striking green, punctuates the composition, highlighting the recurring motif of smoking in Picasso’s late works. With its vibrant palette and bold linear rhythms, the work exemplifies Picasso’s ability to transform the simplest gestures into powerful explorations of abstraction, identity, and expression.

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