The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

Horizontally-oriented print with three rows of three rectangles, each rectangle depicting abstracted scenes alternatively featuring a highly abstracted figure with striped protrusions and a moustache outlined in black and colored in grey or the wavy outline of a long-necked and long wiry-haired person, often looking up with their mouth open as if wailing. Sometimes this person is also depicted holding the limp outline of a baby.

Dream and Lie of Franco II: January 9, 1937

1937

Pablo Picasso

(Spanish, 1881–1973)
printer

Roger Lacourière

(French, 1892–1966)
Spain, 20th century
etching, sugar-lift aquatint, and chine collé on wove paper
Image: 30.5 x 41.5 cm (12 x 16 5/16 in.); Plate: 31.6 x 42.1 cm (12 7/16 x 16 9/16 in.); Sheet: 38 x 57 cm (14 15/16 x 22 7/16 in.)
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 1973.137.4
© 2006 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Catalogue raisonné: Baer III.108.616 (Baer addendum p. 38); Bloch 298; Goeppert 28
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Depicting the violence and chaos of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), this print was one of Picasso's first overtly political works.

Description

Picasso began working on the plate for this etching on January 9 but left it unfinished. He completed the last four frames on June 7 using imagery related to his painting Guernica, including a weeping woman and a mother running from a burning building with a dead child in her arms.
  • Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1973." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 2 (February 1974): 31-78. P. 76, #109. www.jstor.org
    Robinson, William H., Jordi Falgàs, Carmen Belen Lord, and Josefina Alix Trueba. Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí. [Cleveland, OH]: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 458-460, fig. 2, no. 9:29
  • Picasso and Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (co-organizer) (December 8, 2024-March 23, 2025).
    Barcelona & Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí (1868-1939). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 15, 2006-January 7, 2007).
    Cleveland Museum of Art (10/15/2006 - 06/03/2007); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (03/04/2007 - 06/03/2007); "Barcelona & Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí. Miró, Dalí"- EXHIBITED AT CMA VENUE ONLY
  • {{cite web|title=Dream and Lie of Franco II: January 9, 1937|url=false|author=Pablo Picasso, Roger Lacourière|year=1937|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1973.137.4