This exquisite lithograph by Jasper Johns (born 1930), titled Cup 2 Picasso, from the album XXe Siecle, Annee No. 40, Juin 1973, originates from the 1973 edition published by Societe Internationale d'Art XXe Siecle, Paris, under the direction of Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, editeur, Paris, and printed by Mourlot Freres, Paris, 1973. Cup 2 Picasso reflects Johns’s analytical exploration of symbol, perception, and painterly structure during a period of expanding experimentation in printmaking.
Executed as a lithograph on velin paper, this work measures 12.5 x 9.75 inches. Signed in the plate and unnumbered as issued. The edition exemplifies the superb craftsmanship of Mourlot Freres, Paris.
Artwork Details:
Artist: Jasper Johns (born 1930)
Title: Cup 2 Picasso
Medium: Lithograph on velin paper
Dimensions: 12.5 x 9.75 inches (31.75 x 24.77 cm)
Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered as issued
Date: 1973
Publisher: Societe Internationale d'Art XXe Siecle, Paris, under the direction of Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, editeur, Paris
Printer: Mourlot Freres, Paris
Catalogue raisonne reference: Johns, Jasper, et al. The Prints of Jasper Johns, 1960-1993: A Catalogue Raisonne. Universal Ltd. Art Editions, 1994, illustration 123.
Condition: Well preserved, consistent with age and medium
Provenance: From the album XXe Siecle, Annee No. 40, Juin 1973, published by Societe Internationale d'Art XXe Siecle, Paris; printed by Mourlot Freres, Paris, 1973
About the Publication:
Gualtieri di San Lazzaro's XXe Siecle (Twentieth Century) was one of the most influential art journals of the modern era, founded in Paris in 1938 as a platform for the greatest painters, sculptors, and writers of the 20th century. San Lazzaro, a visionary editor, critic, and champion of modernism, believed that art and literature should coexist as expressions of a shared cultural imagination. Under his direction, XXe Siecle became a bridge between European modernism and the international art world, publishing special issues devoted to major artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Braque, Calder, Miro, Kandinsky, and Leger. Each issue paired original essays with specially commissioned lithographs printed by the leading ateliers of Paris, Milan, and New York—including Mourlot, Curwen, and Pizzi—creating a unified dialogue between text and image. Throughout its history, XXe Siecle served as an essential chronicle of modern art, celebrated today for its unparalleled integration of fine art, literature, and design.
About the Artist:
Jasper Johns (born 1930) is widely regarded as one of the most influential and transformative American artists of the postwar era, a painter and printmaker whose groundbreaking fusion of abstraction, symbolism, and conceptual inquiry placed him in direct dialogue with towering modernists such as Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray while establishing a new visual and intellectual foundation for contemporary art; emerging in the mid 1950s with his revolutionary paintings of flags, targets, numbers, alphabets, and other everyday symbols, Johns rejected the emotional volatility of Abstract Expressionism and instead introduced a cool, analytical approach grounded in the semiotic play between object and image, employing encaustic, collage, graphite, and sculptural relief to create layered works that examine how meaning is constructed and perceived; his dialogues with Duchamp’s conceptualism, Picasso’s structural inventiveness, Miro and Kandinsky’s color logic, Giacometti’s existential figuration, and Man Ray’s experimental attitude helped shape a singular aesthetic that directly influenced and helped catalyze Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, inspiring contemporaries and successors including Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, Glenn Ligon, Christopher Wool, Mark Bradford, Mark Grotjahn, and Wade Guyton; celebrated for more than seven decades, Johns’s work is held in the world’s most prestigious museums—including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, and the Moderna Museet—and he is recognized as one of the most intellectually rigorous and technically inventive artists of the 20th and 21st centuries; his market remains exceptionally strong, with his highest auction record achieved on November 11, 2014, when Flag (1983) sold for 36,000,000 USD at Sothebys New York.
Jasper Johns XXe Siecle 1973, Jasper Johns Mourlot lithograph, Jasper Johns Cup 2 Picasso.
