Original lithograph poster by Mourlot, signed in plate, produced for the French Government Tourist Board after a painting by Picasso.

Produced for the French Government Tourist Board this original lithographic poster is adapted from an earlier painting by Picasso rather than conceived solely as a graphic design.

The white doves in the foreground derive from a motif Picasso explored repeatedly in the late 1950s while living in Cannes, where pigeons were a familiar presence in and around his studio at La Californie. In Picasso’s work of this period, such figures operate both as elements of observed daily life and as enduring symbols of peace, renewal, and artistic continuity.

Rather than depicting a literal coastal view, Picasso uses these foreground forms, set against simplified planes of colour and light, to evoke the atmosphere of the Côte d’Azur—Mediterranean warmth, openness, and luminosity distilled into sensation rather than description.

The poster belongs to a period of sustained productivity in southern France following the death of Henri Matisse in 1954, when Picasso increasingly reworked painterly imagery across media. It exemplifies his conviction that graphic art could retain full artistic authority while engaging a broad audience, reimagining the Côte d’Azur as a lived environment shaped by memory, symbol, and form.