Walking around a gallery full of Picasso’s work on Jacqueline made me realize how dedicated and incredible the artist was throughout his life. What particularly stuck out to me, however, was his linoleum cuts. In the process of this particular art-making, Picasso gouged out the image in a piece of linoleum against a block of wood. Traditionally, artists make separate linoleum cuts for each color used in the art. Picasso was innovative, in printing one color from his linocut, then going back to the same piece of linoleum and carving deeper for the next color. There was no room for error, which again proved to me how sensational Picasso was.

Since the image is cut out into linoleum, there’s potential to play with different color schemes. One of my favorite linoleum cuts from Picasso is called “Life Under the Lamp.” This painting may seem fairly simple on the surface, but looking at what went into each and every color is astonishing to me. I first saw the image upstairs in the Pace Gallery, up the spiral staircase in a room set off to the side. “Life Under the Lamp” was one of the only images in the gallery not of Jacqueline, so it was also refreshing to see an image that was not an abstract representation of Picasso’s love.

To see the full process of making “Life Under the Lamp,” the British Museum outlines it here.

A full gallery of Picasso’s work showed me (someone who doubted that he was an incredibly special artist apart from his name) that art definitely is a lifestyle. For example, Picasso created his linocut “Life Under the Lamp” when he was 80 years old. His name is known everywhere you go, and this gallery allowed me to have a greater respect for an image I grew up seeing in my home, shown below

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