Picasso was a prolific artist, having produced about 150,000 works, consisting of 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 300 sculptures and ceramics, and 34,000 illustrations in his 78 year career.

During his early days in Paris, Picasso began creating the Barcelona Suite. There were five original oil paintings in the suite painted between 1901 and 1917. They depict Picasso’s memories of characters he met on the streets of Barcelona in his youth. When viewed together, the series shows a progression of the evolution from his blue period to his rose period.

In 1966, to celebrate Picasso’s 85th birthday, the Museu Picasso in Barcelona published a limited edition of offset lithographs to honor the artist and the city he was so fondly connected to. The series was after Picasso’s paintings from the Barcelona Suite. All of the prints were hand-signed by Picasso.

*Interesting fact: Offset printing or offset lithography is a mass-production printing technique where the image on the printing plate is transferred to an intermediate surface before being printed onto a print surface like paper. This creates a final image that is in the same orientation as the original plate image instead of the typical mirror image of lithography.