Minotaure caressant une Dormeuse, from: La Suite Vollard

This impression of Picasso's Minotaure caressant une Dormeuse (Minotaur caressing a Sleeping Woman) belonged to the artist Paula Rego RA. According to her son Nick Willing, Rego was an enormous admirer of Picasso’s work:

`When she was able to afford a print she bought The Minotaur Caressing the Hand of a Sleeping Girl with his Face and kept it propped up on the mantel piece in her living room in London in front of where she would always sit. It inspired her to push harder and experiment. Printmaking was one of Paula’s passions that she returned to regularly throughout her life. She once said that printmaking was like drinking a cool glass of water after a long time in the desert. She acquired The Blind Minotaur (see lot 43) a few years later and propped that up on the other side of the mantle piece. When Paula was working on her series of Female Genital Mutilation prints at Pauper’s Press, she took it to show printer Simon Marsh so that he could emulate the deep blacks in the print'.