Pablo Picasso’s Deux Femmes (Two Women), 1959, is a commanding linocut that reveals the artist’s extraordinary ability to transform a simple, reductive medium into a vessel for monumental expression. Executed during his celebrated years in Vallauris, when Picasso fully embraced the linocut technique, this work captures two female figures whose profiles are rendered with bold contours, rhythmic symmetry, and a sense of timeless gravitas. The stark interplay of black and white amplifies the sculptural presence of the figures, their gazes fixed forward with an almost archaic solemnity, recalling both ancient reliefs and the boldness of modernist abstraction.

The two women, though simplified to their essential forms, emanate individuality as well as duality—an echo of Picasso’s fascination with the infinite variations of the human face and the complex emotional terrain embodied in female subjects. Their sharply defined features—arched brows, pronounced noses, and full lips—are carved with graphic precision, while the juxtaposition of positive and negative space gives the composition a pulsating energy. At once intimate and monumental, the linocut embodies Picasso’s mastery of contrast: the balance between harmony and tension, individuality and universality, immediacy and permanence.

With Deux Femmes, Picasso elevated the linocut beyond craft into high art, distilling portraiture into a language both timeless and unmistakably modern. The work reflects his restless inventiveness, his reverence for the classical, and his ability to imbue even the most economical means with immense expressive depth.

Created in 1959, Pablo Picasso Deux Femmes (Two Women)is a color linocut on Arches paper hand-signed by Pablo Picasso (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, 1973) in pencil in the lower right margin. Numbered from the edition of 50 in pencil in the lower left margin, this work was published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:
Pablo Picasso Deux Femmes (Two Women) is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the final sale of the work):

1. Baer, Bridgette. Picasso Peintre-Graveur, Tome V – Catalogue Raisonné de l’œuvre grave et des monotypes, Berne: Editions Kornfeld, 1989. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 1239.
2. Bloch, Georges. Picasso Catalogue de l'ouvre gravé et lithographié, Volume I. Kornfeld et Cie: Switzerland, 1968. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 915.
3. McVinney, L. Donald, et al Picasso Linoleum Cuts: The Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kramer Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Random House, 1985. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 8.
4. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany our Pablo Picasso’s Deux Femmes (Two Women), 1959.

About the Framing:
Framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, Pablo Picasso Deux Femmes (Two Women), 1959 is presented in a complementary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.