Original Poster Hommage à Fernand Mourlot by Pablo Picasso, 1990

This is an original lithographic poster created in 1990 by the Ateliers Mourlot as part of the Hommage à Fernand Mourlot series — a centenary tribute produced to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Fernand Mourlot's birth, bringing together thirteen artists who had worked at the legendary Parisian atelier to each contribute an original image in his honor.

For the Picasso contribution, the atelier chose one of the most iconic and visually powerful images in his entire graphic output: the portrait of Dora Maar as Woman with Hat, originally painted in 1939 and first printed as a lithograph at the Mourlot studio in 1956. With her strikingly cubist green face and broad-rimmed flowered hat, the image is among the most immediately recognizable of all Picasso portraits — a masterwork of simultaneous perspectives and saturated color that distills the essence of his postwar graphic language.

That this image was chosen for the Mourlot centenary tribute is deeply fitting. Picasso's collaboration with the Ateliers Mourlot was among the most transformative partnerships in the history of printmaking — arriving at the studio in 1945 at the suggestion of Braque and Matisse, he threw himself into lithography with characteristic intensity, producing nearly four hundred prints over more than two decades. His presence at Mourlot fundamentally changed the perception of lithography as an art form.

A historic piece at the heart of the Mourlot legacy — Picasso's tribute to the workshop that changed his graphic life, and the life of modern printmaking.