Picasso’s first word, apparently, was “pencil”. Well we know what he could do with one of those, for he was a superlative draughtsman, but what’s remarkable is that he achieved apparently effortlessly those same beautiful lines with the more intractable medium of a drypoint needle or a burin, an incising tool, on a metal plate.
Drypoint and etching are tricky techniques; so too are lithographs and sugar aquatint that he adopted later. But he mastered them all with insolent ease as did the masters he most admired, Goya and Rembrandt.
