PICASSO AND THE PRINTS PICASSO has given his letters of nobility to the print, which he has practiced with happiness by giving it a place of predilection in his work. Picasso discovered engraving very early, which he considers as an art in its own right. He has his own press since 1907 and serious until his death at 91 years. His engraved work is considerable. She presents herself as a real diary and occupies a privileged place in her pictorial thought. Between 1899 and 1973, Picasso made more than 2,000 prints, all techniques combined. His insatiable curiosity and his taste for the challenge have given rise to a complex production, in which the artist does not hesitate to experiment with the various techniques of engraving, even to invent new ones. Passionate about innovation and formal freedom, he devotes himself to etching, aquatint, lithography, linocut, monotype, each time trying to renew the genre. He is accompanied in his research by Louis Fort then by Roger Lacourière for the soft cut, by Georges Aubert for wood engraving, by Edmond Desjobert then by Gaston Tutin and Jean Celestin at Fernand Mourlot for lithography, by Hidalgo Arnéra for linocut and, from 1955, by Jean Frélaut then by the brothers Aldo and Piero Crommelynck who set up a printing house in Mougins near Notre-Dame-de-Vie in 1963. PICASSO, associated with these famous craftsmen, gave a new breath to this field of creation which is translated in hundreds of tests, tests, plates of engraving, repentance and good-to-shoot, matrices and productions reconciled.
THE PRINTS MARKET A collection is often born with a multiple work, photograph or print. These affordable media are a low-risk way of rubbing against the art market. The field of print is however as vast as that of its prices, also subject to the effects of fashion and speculation of the moment. While it is true that the prices of contemporary prints have swelled in parallel with the rise in contemporary art prices, they have done so in a more measured way: when the prices of contemporary art took 80% over the decade ( 2000-2010), contemporary print prices still increased by 18%. This market is not only the "poor market" of the original and unique work, it is also a dynamic market that can be a source of great value. Contemporary creators, although adept at this means of dissemination and democratization that is printmaking, represent less than 7% of this market. The heart of the market is in fact at the rhythm of modern signatures (48.5% of the print market) and post-war (28.3%). The artists of this period have not only been the most prolific in history but they are stillthe most expensive in this medium: the millionaire auctions have also been signed for valuable works of Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch and Jasper Johns . In recent years, while exceptional paintings are reaching unaffordable prices, more and more buyers are turning to prints. Auction houses, moreover, are increasingly incorporating prints into their most glamorous sales evenings. Indeed, collectors now understand that for some artists, this technique has counted as much as painting. Adam McCoy, chief print manager at Christie's New York, describes the market as robust. "In general, from one season to the next, the market is growing," he adds, before referring to the historical strength of the collection sales, or artist, unique. "Many collectors turn to prints because they cost only a fraction of what they would pay for a painting," says Mary Bartow, head of the sector at Sotheby's.