PRINTS & MULTIPLES
The auction price of just under CHF 600 000 achieved for Pablo Picasso’s colour linocut ‘Buste de femme d’après Cranach le Jeune’ from 1958 underlines two things: the Spaniard’s standing in 20th-century art and the exceptional quality and expressive power of his graphic work.
The group of colour linocuts created between 1954 and 1963 in collaboration with the printer Hidalgo Arnéra in Vallauris is now regarded as one of the most innovative phases of Picasso’s oeuvre. During these years, Picasso perfected the lost-cut technique, in which all colours are printed from a single linoleum block. After each colour is printed, the block is further reduced – an irreversible process requiring the utmost precision and resulting in works of remarkable density and clarity.
PABLO PICASSO
Buste de femme
d'après Cranach le Jeune, 1958.
Colour linocut, 64.5 × 53.5 cm.
© Succession Picasso /
2025, ProLitteris, Zurich
Sold for CHF 595 000
to Germany
For the present linocut, Picasso drew on a Renaissance subject: a postcard sent to him by his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler from Vienna, depicting a female portrait by Lucas Cranach the Younger. Starting from a two-colour proof, Picasso developed a composition of five superimposed colours, experimenting with their combinations.
The final version – presented here as an artist’s proof outside the edition of 50 – is striking for the powerful layering of colour fields, which lends the image a sculptural presence. Picasso transforms Cranach’s elegant Renaissance figure into a frontal, archaic-modern apparition, creating an abstracted face of compelling formal tension.
ANDY
WARHOL
Grevy's Zebra, 1983.
Colour screenprint, 123/150. 96.4 × 96.2 cm.
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the
Visual Arts, Inc. / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich
Sold for CHF 160 000
to Hong Kong
ANDY
WARHOL
Mick Jagger, 1975.
Colour screenprint, 115/250. 111.5 × 73.5 cm.
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the
Visual Arts, Inc. / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich
Sold for CHF 130 000
in Switzerland
ANDY
WARHOL
Apple, 1985.
Colour screenprint, 126/190. 96.5 × 96.5 cm.
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the
Visual Arts, Inc. / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich
Sold for CHF 175 000
to Great Britain
CONTACT FOR
ENQUIRIES AND
CONSIGNMENTS:
CLARISSE DOGE
Head of DepartmentPrints & Multiples
doge@kollerauktionen.com
+41 44 445 63 20