Descripción
Neither this poster nor its motif have been reproduced on other posters. Picasso produced this poster as a contribution to the tribute paid by Spanish artists to the poet Antonio Machado. The work reveals his talent as a portraitist. The tribute took place on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Don Antonio Machado y Ruiz and was held in Collioure in 1955.
In the poster Picasso gave Machado a charismatic air and harmonized the text with a calligraphy similar to that of the facial features. The portrait gives a feeling of intellectual dignity typical of the delicate and melancholic lyrical poet. Rubén Darío described Antonio Machado as a “mysterious and silent person”, and this is the image that Picasso gives us, offering us a Machado almost always surrounded by a deep silence, made of permanent meditation and dreams.