The Two Thinkers

The Two Thinkers shows two monumental seated figures turned towards one another, their pale bodies described with spare coloured lines against a dense black field. Picasso’s economy of drawing makes the exchange feel both intimate and theatrical: the dark central shape holds the pair together, while their differing poses and the small, attentive turn of each head suggest a silent conversation passing between them.

The sheet is an interpretation lithograph after Picasso, produced by the specialist printers Mourlot Frères under Tériade’s direction rather than drawn by Picasso directly on the lithographic stone. Colour was separated and printed in successive passages on Arches paper, translating the original drawing’s pale lines, touches of yellow and blue, and emphatic black ground into a carefully controlled editioned image.

The image belongs to Picasso and the Human Comedy, a sequence of 180 drawings the artist made during a concentrated period in late 1953 and early 1954, revisiting performers, lovers, observers and figures drawn from his own visual history. The sequence was published in Paris by Éditions de la Revue Verve as numbers 29-30 of the magazine, with an essay by Michel Leiris and an appreciation by Rebecca West, alongside twelve colour lithographs after Picasso, lithographic covers and title page, and further heliogravures. A separate portfolio gathered the twelve lithographs, a frontispiece and three colour-enhanced heliogravures on larger sheets in a signed edition of seventy-five, from which this impression, numbered 12/75, comes.

“I do not seek. I find.”

— Pablo Picasso