Flower of Hands

Created on September 19th 1955, 'Flower of Hands' was drawn in coloured crayons on paper and was one of a series of similar designs which Picasso created on the same day. In the 1950s, Picasso’s style had changed once again. In the summer of 1955, he bought ‘La Californie’, a large villa near to Cannes in France with an enormous garden. Life at La Californie, and at the more private house near Aix to which he subsequently moved when La Californie became a tourist attraction, suited him as it reminded him of the heat and light of the Barcelona of his youth.

A number of elements are characteristic in his work of this time, including his use of simplified imagery, the vagueness of his subjects and his strident use of lines and colour. Perhaps Picasso’s most famous quote dates from this period: when questioned in the presence of some schoolchildren about the abstraction of work like Flower of Hands he said: “When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them”. Towards the end of his life, drawing and painting became an obsession with Picasso, and he would date each picture with absolute precision, which is why experts today can be so precise in their attribution of this famous work.

The print is hand numbered and accompanied by a certificate signed by the Master Printer and bearing a matching number to the print.