This aquatint, Femme brune de trois quarts, was created in 1947 as an illustration for the book "Vingt Poèmes de Góngora".  (Luis de Góngora was a Castilian poet from Cordova who lived 1561-1627.)   The book was illustrated with 41 original etchings and Spanish text hand-written by Picasso.  The poems were also printed in French.

This illustration is one of the heads of women that were created for the book which was published by Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre (Paris) in 1948.

The full collection is at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and on display at the Picasso Foundation in Málaga where Picasso was born.  Earlier this year the entire book and illustrations were exhibited at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.

This illustration accompanied one of 20 sonnets by Góngora that were hand-written by Picasso in this special book.  Picasso knew of Góngora's poetry as a youth in Spain and reconnected with it after World War II when he began creating pottery in Vallauris.  His illustrations for the book are testimony to his love of all things feminine and Spain.

"... Picasso used the lift ground process he had so thoroughly explored during his work on the illustrations for Buffon [also in this exhibition].  Here, however, he worked the plates directly - without retouches, without tonal superimpositions, using neither scraper nor burnisher - instead of placing them twice in acid to achieve first the grey, then the black tones; he drew directly on the plates - sometimes with brush, sometimes with pen" - Goeppert/Cramer catalog, page 138.