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Pablo PicassoPablo Picasso THÉÂTRE OU TÉLÉVISION: CAPE ET ÉPÉE 1968 Aquatint - 347 Series1968
1968
$15,000
£11,418.30
€13,162.45
CA$21,361.83
A$23,298.78
CHF 12,249.55
MX$281,838.42
NOK 152,859.06
SEK 144,437.28
DKK 98,267.59
About the Item
Pablo Picasso’s 1968 etching and aquatint Théâtre ou télévision: cape et épée belongs to the artist’s late period, a time when he reflected intensely on the themes of performance, spectatorship, and the human condition. Executed in bold contrasts of black and white, the composition brims with vitality, ambiguity, and theatricality, qualities that link it both to the grand traditions of Spanish art and to Picasso’s personal fascination with spectacle.
The title, translating to Theater or Television: Cape and Sword, situates the work within a modern dialogue between ancient forms of live performance and the emergent dominance of mass media. By the late 1960s, television had begun to eclipse theater as a popular medium, and Picasso seems to interrogate what is lost or transformed in this transition. His stage-like setting, complete with actors, exaggerated gestures, and a sense of dramatic confrontation, suggests both the timelessness of theater and its uneasy coexistence with contemporary entertainment.
The image itself recalls the traditions of comedia de capa y espada—the Spanish “cape and sword” plays of the Golden Age, which combined romance, honor, and intrigue. At the center, a voluptuous female figure, rendered with expressive, almost frenetic lines, appears caught in a tense struggle or performance with surrounding male figures. Their bodies, scratched and gouged into the plate, are simultaneously monumental and ghostlike, an effect enhanced by the etching’s cross-hatched textures and stark illumination. The scene oscillates between farce and menace, echoing both carnival and tragedy.
Picasso’s technical mastery of etching and aquatint is on full display here. Rather than pursuing refinement or polish, he employs a raw, energetic hand, scratching into the plate with urgency. The resulting surface vibrates with restless energy, underscoring the theatricality of the subject. Highlights emerge from deep black fields, creating a chiaroscuro reminiscent of both baroque stage lighting and cinematic spotlights. The print’s textures evoke movement, drama, and instability, drawing the viewer into a turbulent performance.
Thematically, Théâtre ou télévision: cape et épée reflects Picasso’s lifelong engagement with spectacle, ritual, and the mask. Like the bullfight—another form of Spanish theater that fascinated him—the “cape and sword” play dramatizes power, desire, and mortality. At the same time, the reference to television grounds the work in the late 20th century, hinting at Picasso’s awareness of shifting cultural forms. The ambiguity of whether we are witnessing a live stage or a mediated image deepens the work’s commentary on performance and spectatorship.
Created in the final decade of Picasso’s life, the print also belongs to the artist’s profound late graphic production, which saw him revisit themes of eroticism, artifice, and mortality with renewed vigor. Here, the vitality of line and the bawdy energy of the figures suggest an artist unafraid to confront life’s theatrical absurdities even in old age. The mixture of comedy, eroticism, and menace reflects the paradoxical tone of much of Picasso’s late work: celebratory yet haunted, playful yet profound.
In Théâtre ou télévision: cape et épée, Picasso collapses centuries of performance history into a single, explosive image. By setting the intimacy of live theater against the distance of television, and by staging archetypal characters in a raw and restless visual field, he dramatizes the eternal human appetite for spectacle—and the shifting forms it takes across time. The print thus stands not only as a late masterpiece of etching and aquatint, but also as a meditation on the enduring interplay between art, performance, and life itself.
PABLO PICASSO: THÉÂTRE OU TÉLÉVISION: CAPE ET ÉPÉE , 1968
Plate 87 from the 347 Series
Aquatint and etching on Rives vellum paper
Image: 11.61 x 13.58 inches (29.5 x 34.5 cm)
Sheet: 17.91 x 20.47 inches (45.5 x 52 cm)
Frame: 20.5 x 23.5 inches (52.07 x 59.69 cm)
Signed on the lower right corner
# 6/50
- Creator:Pablo Picasso (1881-1973, Spanish)
- Creation Year:1968
- Dimensions:Height: 17.9 in (45.47 cm)Width: 20.47 in (52 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:In fine, age appropriate condition. Remnants of old hinges verso.
- Gallery Location:Rancho Santa Fe, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU516317011602
Pablo Picasso
One of the most prolific and revolutionary artists the world has ever seen, Pablo Picasso had a tremendous impact on the development of 20th-century modern art. Although he is best known for his association with the Cubist movement, which he founded with Georges Braque, Picasso’s influence extends to Surrealism, neoclassicism and Expressionism.
“Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction,” the Spanish artist proclaimed. In Picasso's Cubist paintings, he emphasizes the two-dimensionality of the canvas, breaking with conventions regarding perspective, foreshortening and proportion. Picasso was inspired by Iberian and African tribal art. One of his most famous pre-Cubist works is Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), a painting considered immoral and shocking at the time for its depiction of nude women whose faces resemble Iberian tribal masks.
Picasso made many portraits in this style, most often of the women in his life, their expressively colored faces composed of geometric shards of surface planes. In Woman in a Hat (Olga), 1935, he painted his first wife as an assemblage of abstract forms, leaving the viewer to decipher the subject through the contrasting colors and shapes. Picasso was a tireless artist, creating more than 20,000 paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics and sculptures. Tracing his life’s work reveals the progression of modern art, on which he had an unparalleled influence.
Browse an expansive collection of Pablo Picasso's art on 1stDibs.
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