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Postcard sketched by Pablo Picasso

The Beautiful Postcards Picasso Distributed Among his Friends

Inspire

Thanks to Picasso’s innate talent in the field of arts, his letters are now considered beautiful and humorous works of art.

Fictional literature often deals with the fall of the postal service, a now obsolete form of human communication which also in some way represents the death of warm and sensitive relationships between individuals. In those nostalgic tales, the manner in which the materials which for centuries strung together the thoughts and the emotions of free men (a pen and paper) was forgotten. Now there are only epic examples of the epistolary relationships of family members, lovers and intellectuals.

In order to illustrate on the latter, we have the case of Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter, a key creator to the artistic vanguard of the twentieth century, which transformed into a universal archetype of the modern artistic genius. In his constant travels he wrote a great number of letters to his colleagues, in which he shared his inquisitiveness and accompanied them with comical drawings. Among the friends who would receive these sorts of epistolary communications we can find Gertrude Stein, Igor Stravinsky, Georges Braque and Juan Gris.

Postcard with sketch by Pablo Picasso

Picasso constructed two of his most prominent phases due to the proximity he had with Paris, its landscapes, cafés and artists influenced the painter exceedingly. Jean Cocteau, of French origins and a great friend to the artist, also exchanged several reflections about his life and work through a series of letters that are still preserved today. Once, Picasso sent him a beautiful postcard with a watercolor painting depicting the balcony of Cocteau’s mother’s balcony, where the Spanish painters stayed for a while, in number 10 Rue d’Anjou.

Postcard with sketch by Pablo PicassoPostcard with sketch by Pablo Picasso

These sorts of examples are abundant throughout the history of art, we can consider for example, the emblematic epistolary relation that Van Gogh and his brother Leo kept, or the inspiring advice Rainer Maria Rilke gave a young and unknown poet. To maintain this ancient form of communication alive, we can share with our loved ones the pleasure of opening a letter with the scent of traveling and memories.

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