An exceptional collection of linocut prints by Pablo Picasso awaits the traveller—not in Europe but around the bend of the South Saskatchewan River. The Remai Modern art museum, opened in 2017 and within walking distance of Saskatoon’s city centre, holds 406 prints by the famed Spanish artist. This treasure trove is considered the world’s largest collection of Picasso linocuts, valued at $20 million.
“We are getting experimental with our Picasso programs,” says Michelle Jacques, chief curator of the Remai Modern. “Over the five years since we opened, we have had a number of exhibitions that look quite directly at Picasso’s work.”
The chain of events leading to this cultural coup originates with Saskatchewan-born art dealer Frederick Mulder. Working in England, Mulder spent a decade assembling the Picasso prints. From his small-town roots in Eston, Mulder went on to become a leading art dealer and expert in 19th- and 20th-century European prints.
In 2012, Mulder gifted six Picasso linocuts to his alma mater, the University of Saskatchewan. Two years later, he sold a full collection to the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation. In turn, lead patron Ellen Remai, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who lives in Saskatoon, donated the Picasso prints to the gallery named after her.
“She felt strongly that having something of international significance and appeal would add to the Remai’s profile and elevate it to the national stage,” Jacques says.
Prior to the opening of the Remai Modern, art lovers in Saskatoon patronized the Mendel Art Gallery. The Mendel had been operating in the city’s downtown for more than 50 years until it closed in 2015 to make way for the more spacious Remai Modern. A plan for a new venue gained traction in 2011 when Ellen Remai announced a donation of $30 million on behalf of the foundation. Today, the Remai Modern is the largest contemporary art museum in western Canada, holding a collection of more than 8,000 works. While Remai does not sit on the board, she continues her support. Two years ago, she made a 20-year financial commitment to enable visitors admission by donation on every open day.
Life in Print: William Kentridge and Pablo Picasso, 2024, Remai Modern, Saskatoon. Photo: Carey Shaw. Works by Pablo Picasso (top) and William Kentridge (bottom). © Picasso Estate (Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC, 2024).
Selections from the prized linocut collection are continually displayed on the art museum’s second floor. Current linocuts on view until December 29 are arranged alongside those of South African artist William Kentridge, in a show titled Life in Print: William Kentridge and Pablo Picasso. Past themed exhibitions have included Picasso’s Ceramic Studio, Drawing in Colour, Becoming the Faun, and Functional Picasso.
Picasso produced 197 original linocuts in his lifetime, over the course of 17 years, working out of a studio at Vallauris in southern France. When he started in 1951, he was 70 years old. He was assisted by master printer Hidalgo Arnéra. He created portraits of women, some nudes, and bullfighting scenes, according to Jacques, alongside a whole series around the Bacchanalia (a Greco-Roman festival) to see what he could do in the medium using images and compositions that were familiar to him.
Known best for his cubist paintings, Picasso explored a wide variety of mediums and produced 2,400 prints, most notably etchings, lithographs—and linocuts. The idea of carving an image into a material commonly used as flooring became popular in the 1920s. Unlike the traditional woodcut, linoleum is more pliable to the cutter’s tool. Once carved, the plate is inked with a roller, covered with a sheet of paper, and moved through a printing press. Afterward, the paper is “pulled” from the plate to reveal the transferred image. The process of inking and pressing the plate is repeated multiple times. Typically Picasso produced an edition of 50 prints from each plate. He used various types of paper, from wood-free to Arches watercolour.
Some of Picasso’s prints use a single colour of ink, usually black. Portrait de femme à la fraise et au chapeau (1962) is a linocut bathed in light-blue ink. Others, such as Portrait de jeune fille, d’après Cranach le Jeune 11 (1958), are printed in several bold colours. Remarkably, Picasso created his multicoloured prints using a single plate.
Picasso: Becoming the Faun, 2023, Remai Modern, Saskatoon. Photo: Carey Shaw. © Picasso Estate (Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC, 2024).
“You can make a plate for each colour,” Jacques explains, “but Picasso would use this reductive linocut method. He would cut into the lino and print in one colour, then he would cut into the same lino block and print the next colour.”
Jacques agrees the method leaves little room for error. “Working in layers meant he had to think it through to anticipate how he was going to build the image. I think he had such a facility for linos. He was so practised at image making.”
The Remai Modern collection consists of 194 of the 197 Picasso linocuts known to exist, in addition to 212 working proofs. The latter are the artist’s trial impressions. Picasso also created linocut posters for events of the day such as a bullfight or pottery exhibition. The posters were printed in editions of 200 to 600.
When he wasn’t in the printmaking studio, Picasso was exploring pottery, shaping clay at a wheel or by hand building, later painting images on the completed work. His ceramics were also produced in large editions, some of the plates and plaques making specific reference to his linocuts, both in subject and style. Images of bullfights, owls, fish, and mythological motifs abound. The Remai Modern has also acquired Picasso ceramics, with 23 pieces of their collection gifted by Mulder in 2014.
“Picasso came to this work late in life when you expect artists to do what they are in the habit of doing,” Jacques says. “So I think lino and ceramics pushed Picasso forward to discover ways to make new kinds of imagery.”
Jacques points to other benefits for Picasso working in the ceramic and print studios: collaborative relationships. In both spaces, he worked with people who had incredible expertise in their mediums.
Picasso: Process & Poetry, 2018, Remai Modern, Saskatoon. Photo: Blaine Campbell. © Picasso Estate (Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC, 2024).
The collaborative process is demonstrated in the Remai Modern’s Connect Gallery, a room on the main floor transformed into a working print studio with an etching press. Its latest exhibit, Live Editions: Jillian Ross Print, had featured the current printmaking projects of Saskatoon-based master print Jillian Ross in collaboration with Kentridge and local printmaker Wally Dion, a member of Yellow Quill First Nation, born and raised in Saskatoon and now living in New York.
“It’s been an opportunity to witness how much work goes into making prints,” Jacques says. “In this day and age when you can print off your computer, it’s been interesting to look at the complexities of this kind of printmaking and help people realize that prints are as significant a visual language as painting or sculpture.”
Jacques acknowledges the controversies attached to Picasso’s legacy but also underscores the importance of his contributions to the visual arts. “That’s what we aim to do with our projects around printmaking,” she says.
The Remai Modern is planning a symposium on printmaking at the end of September. Mulder is the keynote speaker and will talk about his career and the building of the Picasso collection. Listeners are sure to appreciate the serendipity of Picasso’s prints’ finding a welcome home on the Canadian prairies.
