Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Portrait of Jaime Sabartès, 1976 (1901)

Artist-printed lithograph, 300 g paper, 47 x 32 cm (inside dimensions of the passe-partout measuring 57 x 42 cm); published by Centro Diffusione Cultura Milano; paper specially produced for this edition by Cartiera Sterzi; print run of 1,000 copies; the lithographic plates were destroyed to prevent unauthorized prints.

Picasso painted the painting on which this lithograph is based in 1901, at the beginning of his “Blue Period” (1901–1904). The original oil painting is housed at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

The figure in the painting: The portrait depicts Jaume (Jaime) Sabartés—a Spanish poet, sculptor, and close friend of Picasso, who later in life became his personal secretary and custodian of his legacy.Composition: Sabartés sits alone at a café table, resting his chin on his hand, his gaze fixed on the distance, which conveys a sense of deep isolation and melancholy. In front of him stands a large beer mug (le bock).

Among the first paintings from his second stay in Paris, this work marks a departure from the loose brushwork typical of his earlier works, in favor of a decisive reduction of the image to two dimensions. From themes of typical folk life and crowds in multicolored settings, Picasso moves on to solitary figures, couples, and figures from the “demimonde,” grouped into an austere, seemingly flat icon, carved like a model print, expressing reality and emotions through lines and colors alone. His anonymous life in the slums of Montmartre, much like that of his friend, the poet Sabartès—who described this period in the book *Picasso: Portraits and Memories*— the loneliness and nocturnal lethargy of the cafés are somehow reflected in this synthesis of color and form. Picasso also resolutely refrains from characterizing the model. Immersed in a monochromatic blue palette—at times faded, at times darkened—the figure becomes impersonal, serving instead to define the idea of a pensive and melancholic human presence.

The Blue Period in Pablo Picasso’s work, lasting from 1901 to 1904, was a pivotal time marked by a profound personal tragedy—the suicide of the artist’s friend, Carlos Casagemas, in 1901. This event became a turning point for Picasso, triggering intense melancholy and depression that were directly reflected in his paintings. The Blue Period is characterized by the dominance of cool, subdued shades of blue—a color symbolizing sadness, loneliness, and introspection. Picasso deliberately used this color palette to emphasize the emotional weight of his works, giving them a profound, psychological expression. His paintings from this period are almost visual poetry of suffering, in which the aesthetics of color blend with the expressive, simplified forms of the figures.


Following the Blue Period, Picasso’s work entered the Rose Period between 1904 and 1906. It was a time of optimism and a warming of the tone of his works after the melancholic Blue Period.