Picasso Signed Flute

A signed Picasso print can be worth quite a bit of money. In 2022, a signed print titled "Le Repas frugal" ("The Frugal Repast") by the revolutionary Spanish artist sold for $8 million.

While a Cubist painting by the artist sold for $179 million in 2015, the price range for original Pablo Picasso prints is vast. A signed Picasso print can garner millions of dollars at auction, even as a lesser-known lithograph might sell for somewhere in the low five figures.

It's important to note that determining the value of any collectible depends on a variety of factors. Fine art prints are more valuable when they are signed by the artist, and experts suggest that a print's value can gradually increase over time. A signed Picasso print's precise worth, however, will depend on its condition (paper is fragile!), subject matter and provenance.

Larger prints as well as works in color are likely to be worth more than their smaller counterparts in black and white. The value of a print is also informed by whether the work is editioned or not, as well as the size and number of the edition. (A print from an edition run of 50 is theoretically more valuable than one from a run of 200.)

Picasso created "The Frugal Repast" at the end of what is known as his "Blue Period," in which the artist stuck to a monochromatic palette of blue and blue-green for most of the paintings he produced between 1901 and 1904.

The etching was made in 1904 in Paris using a recycled zinc plate that Picasso scraped clean of what was previously there. The print is part of what came to be known as the "Saltimbanque Suite," the artist's first major body of work in printmaking. And while Picasso had no formal training in printmaking, he was a tireless innovator with media, creating more than 20,000 paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics and sculptures throughout his lifetime.

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