Face in Profile (plate, page 21) from Corps perdu

Pablo Picasso · 1949, published 1950

Here we have Face in Profile (plate, page 21) from Corps perdu — an illustrated book by Picasso, nineteen forty-nine, published nineteen fifty. An engraving, cut directly into metal with a burin, so every line tapers as the hand pushes and lifts. It is among the palest things in this museum — measured, almost the whole surface reads as light.

Medium Engraving from an illustrated book with twenty engravings, ten aquatints (one with drypoint), one drypoint, and one etching (including wrapper front) · Dimensions plate: 16 1/8 × 12 1/8" (40.9 × 30.8 cm); sheet: 15 3/8 × 11 1/8" (39 × 28.2 cm) · Credit The Louis E. Stern Collection

Hanging beside it in Gallery 520: Ivory Coast Baulé, Coupling (plate, page 17) from Corps perdu

More by Pablo Picasso here: She-Goat, Goat Skull and Bottle, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Boy Leading a Horse, Two Nudes, Woman Plaiting Her Hair