Featured 1953 Lithograph

Not sure if original lithographic crayon or some type of reproduction.
I guess non-US, judging by the date. On the last photo, there may be a signature or just scribbles!
To me it looks like Chagall influenced but for sure not by him.
Any thoughts?
Thanks

 

Picasso, Games and Reading, 1959. What you are seeing as a squiggle is the fingers of a hand.

Near the bottom of this page:
http://www.affordableart101.com/SearchResults.asp?searching=Y&sort=2&search=picasso&show=80

 

Wow MOS, how do you nail that stuff so fast!!!! RIGHT ON!!!!!

 

Thanks a lot. Mine also was issued by the the Cincinnati Art Museum. The sheet is trimmed and there is no text about the publisher but there is info on the back by the curator Gustave Von Groschwitz.
Seems like the original is reversed, but why the date as well?




By the way the Reader is Françoise Gilot and those are her kids Claude and Paloma.

 

Hypothetical: if Picasso drew the image on stone, then a print pulled from the stone would be a mirror image of what was on the stone. The red signature would have been added later. Your print shows the image as it would have appeared on the stone, as Picasso drew it.

 

You are right that the signature was added later. Here is one without it.



Here is what I think. The prints with the reversed dates and images are probably zinc lithographs. I guess Picasso worked on the zinc plate the same way as on the original drawing and when printed, the examples came reversed.

So mine has to be an offset print then, like the image was transferred on rubber and then printed?
Actually, if not wrong at one point Picasso will draw the image on paper, then transfer to litho stone and then print. The result would be a reverse of the surface which will have the same orientation of the original drawing.

 

You don't have an original Picasso lithograph. You have a reproduced print from an exhibition in 1959. The one in Chicago, with the reversed lettering and red signature, is an original lithograph from 1953. Why your image is reversed, I don't know. It is a curious thing, but is it important? It's a known reproduction. A bigger issue to you is that yours has been trimmed.