Tête Homme au Maillot Rayé is a colour lithograph executed by Pablo Picasso in 1964, signed and numbered from the edition of fifty in graphite in the lower margin, published by Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris and printed by the master printer Aldo Crommelynck — one of the most distinguished printmaking collaborations of Picasso's late career. The date is inscribed in mirror-reverse in the upper right corner alongside the state number, a characteristic feature of work drawn directly onto the lithographic stone.

The piece dates from a group of colour lithographs from Picasso's final decade in which the male head — often a figure of comic or theatrical character, wearing striped clothing that recalls the maillot rayé of the French workman, the sailor or the circus performer — becomes a vehicle for an uninhibited chromatic and formal expressiveness quite distinct from the more resolved compositions of the linocut series. At eighty-three, Picasso was working with a speed and freedom that dispensed entirely with conventional notions of finish, the lithographic crayon applied in broad, gestural strokes of green, blue, yellow, pink and orange that describe the face through colour alone, without recourse to conventional modelling or spatial logic.

The outcome is a portrait of startling aliveness and good humour. The mismatched eyes — one yellow-circled, one a flat green disc — the zigzag eyebrows, the blue angular nose and the wide orange mouth give the figure the quality of a mask or a caricature, the exaggeration serving not to diminish the sitter but to intensify his presence. Printed by Crommelynck with the precision that characterised the atelier's work, the colour lithograph captures the freshness of the crayon marks on stone with complete fidelity. Tête Homme au Maillot Rayé is among the most vital and unguarded works of Picasso's late graphic output — a portrait made with the confidence of an artist who had long since earned the right to please himself entirely.

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