by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Introduction
Two hands meet around a bunch of flowers. One comes from the left, the other from the right; neither belongs to a person we can see. Long green stems climb into bright, spare flower heads against an otherwise empty white ground. Picasso dated the design 21 April 1958. It became an image for an international peace gathering in Stockholm that July, and its simple act of giving—or receiving—has kept it in circulation ever since. [1] [3]
The picture is often called Bouquet of Flowers, Bouquet of Peace or Hands with Flowers. A more precise French title is Fleurs et mains, “Flowers and Hands,” the title attached to a photographic record of the original drawing in the Musée national Picasso-Paris archive[1]. The distinction matters: the dated drawing, the 1958 congress poster, later textless prints and modern reproductions are not one physical artwork. They carry the same design in different forms. This page is about Picasso's hands-and-flowers image and how it moved from drawing to a public appeal for peace. [1] [2]
At a Glance
- Also known as: Bouquet of Peace or Fleurs et mains
- Design date: 21 April 1958
- Original setting: An image for an international peace gathering in Stockholm
Bouquet of Flowers in Picasso's career
First Communion
1896Three Musicians
1921Guernica
1937Las Meninas series
1957Bouquet of Flowers
design dated 1958The highlighted work is dated with the qualifications explained in the sources on this page. The other works are selective points of comparison, not the start or end of a style.
Contents
- What do the hands and flowers show?
- The original drawing and its date
- Why was it made for Stockholm?
- From coloured pencil to poster and print
- The title and the meaning of a gift
What do the hands and flowers show?
Picasso builds the composition from remarkably few elements. Four large flower heads carry strong blues, reds, yellows and oranges. Green stems run nearly the full height of the sheet. A few dark, bristling leaves interrupt their vertical movement. The hands are mostly black outlines, without the colour that makes the flowers so conspicuous. One encloses the stems higher up; the other supports them below. Their arms enter from opposite edges, so the space between them becomes the scene of an encounter. [1]
There is no table, vase, garden or horizon. Nor are there portraits to tell us who gives the flowers and who accepts them. The stems partly hide the exact points where fingers grip, while the arms make a loose horizontal band across the middle of the upright design. Colour gathers at the top and line gathers below. Even at a glance, the eye can read a movement from one side of the page to the other, then upward along the stems. [1]
It is natural to describe the gesture as an exchange. The Picasso museum shop in Münster[3] describes a bouquet passing from one hand to another. Yet the image does not pin down a single instant: the hands may still be sharing its weight. That small ambiguity is part of its strength. The viewer can recognise a gift without being told a private story about two particular people. Calling the hands “brothers,” lovers, nations or any named pair would go beyond what Picasso actually depicts. [3]
The flowers themselves are inventions rather than botanical specimens. Rounded centres and short strokes of petals give them the directness of a child's drawing, but “childlike” need not mean careless. Picasso pares down each head so that colour and rhythm can be read quickly, including at the distance of a street poster. The white paper gives every stem and outline room. The composition can carry a public message because it does not require a long narrative to be understood. [1] [3]
The original drawing and its date
The Paris Picasso museum's archive catalogues a photograph of a coloured-pencil drawing titled Fleurs et mains, dated 21 April 1958 in the work's title. It identifies the photographed design with Zervos XVIII, 55, a standard catalogue reference, and records that the archival photograph was made for Galerie Louise Leiris. This is unusually useful evidence for a picture commonly encountered only as a reproduction: it establishes an original coloured-pencil design behind the later printed versions. [1]
The archive must be read carefully. Its inventory number APPH10797 belongs to the photograph, not the drawing. Its gelatin-silver medium and approximately 21-centimetre measurement describe the photographic print. The archive does not thereby say that the museum owns the original Picasso drawing or that the original was made in gelatin silver. The photograph's own date is unrecorded in that entry; that is separate from the 21 April 1958 date attached to the drawing it depicts. [1]
The surviving archive entry establishes the original's existence and its relationship to a known catalogue reference, but it is not a complete current catalogue of the original sheet. In particular, the public record used here does not verify where the drawing can now be seen. That limit is worth observing when so many printed versions appear online beside claims to be an “original.” A reproduction of the image and a holding record for the coloured-pencil sheet answer different questions. [1]
The date also corrects a common mistake. Picasso did not create the design in July simply because the Stockholm event took place then. The mark visible in many versions reads “21.4.58.” The drawing precedes the July congress by almost three months. A printed date within an image can establish the date of the design it reproduces, but it does not date each individual sheet printed from it. [1]
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Watch on YouTubeWhy was it made for Stockholm?
The bouquet image was used for a peace congress held in Stockholm from 16 to 22 July 1958. A Swedish government historical inquiry[3] locates the international meeting at Eriksdalshallen and describes its disarmament and international-cooperation context. The Münster Picasso museum shop[3] independently identifies Picasso's bouquet as a design for the congress poster. It was a political image made to circulate, not an exhibition poster advertising a Picasso show. [3]
The background was more complicated than a timeless wish for harmony. This was the Cold War; arguments over nuclear weapons, cooperation and Soviet influence shaped the peace movement. The Swedish inquiry records both an international support committee and sharp disagreement over the movement's positions, including criticism after the Soviet intervention in Hungary. Those facts do not tell us what every viewer thought of Picasso's poster. They do explain why “peace” on a 1958 street wall was a live political claim, not merely a decorative caption under flowers. [3]
Picasso had already provided a very different image for the movement. In 1949, Louis Aragon selected one of his dove images for the Paris peace congress poster, as the Musée national Picasso-Paris chronology[1] records. The 1958 bouquet does not replace that particular dove or turn into another version of it. A bird can evoke peace as an emblem; two hands and a bouquet show a human act. The idea of peace is expressed through an offered object and a meeting across the centre of the sheet. [1] [3]
Picasso's own political relationship with organised peace campaigns was not without tension. The Paris museum chronology notes his 1956 participation in a collective letter about Hungary. That is a reminder not to fold every poster he made into a simple story of party loyalty or universal agreement. What can be said about Fleurs et mains is narrower and firmer: Picasso drew this design in April 1958; it was used for a July Stockholm peace appeal; viewers encountered its flowers in a public political setting. [1] [3]
From coloured pencil to poster and print
The printed history explains much of the confusion around the work's name and medium. The original design was a coloured-pencil drawing. Congress posters used that design with event wording. Other printed sheets omit the lettering and show only the hands and flowers. Still more reproductions appeared later, sometimes framed and sold under English titles such as Bouquet of Peace. If a picture has no congress wording, that alone does not make it Picasso's original drawing. [1] [2] [3]
Museum collection records make this distinction visible. The University of Michigan Museum of Art[2] owns a 1958 colour lithograph on paper catalogued Fleurs et mains (Flowers and Hands); After the crayon drawing, accession 1964/2.146. Its wording says exactly what the sheet is: a printed work after the drawing. The Kunstmuseum Den Haag[2] likewise catalogues its copy as a reproductie naar tekening—a reproduction after the drawing. Neither record licenses us to call every image of the bouquet an original work on paper. [2]
Print descriptions vary because they refer to different objects and sometimes use “lithograph” broadly. A French Artcurial catalogue[4] describes one numbered, textless impression as a colour offset lithograph after Picasso, related to the poster; a German Neumeister catalogue[4] likewise describes a textless print after a coloured-pencil drawing. The printer named in poster records belongs to the printed poster, not to the making of the original pencil drawing. There is no need to force drawing, congress poster and collectors' print into a single medium. [4]
The lower-right signature is another trap. A printed impression may show Picasso's name and “21.4.58” within the image. Some particular impressions have a second pencil signature in a margin, as auction catalogues describe. Those are distinct features. Seeing the in-image name on a JPEG cannot prove that the pictured sheet was separately hand-signed, numbered or authenticated. A seller's edition claim has to be checked against the actual sheet, its margins and reliable documentation, not inferred from the familiar bouquet motif. [4]
This distinction also changes how to talk about size. The Michigan and Hague museums publish different dimensions for the printed examples they hold. Artcurial and Neumeister describe still other individual impressions. Those measurements are not a dispute over one unique picture; they belong to particular print objects and formats. A poster with a lower text block, a textless sheet and a photographic record of the drawing will not have identical physical boundaries. [2] [4]
The title and the meaning of a gift
“Bouquet of Flowers” is a useful English label for finding the image, but it is not the only name in use. The Paris archival title Fleurs et mains puts hands and flowers on equal footing. Printed and commercial records also use “Hands with Flowers,” Mains aux fleurs, La Paix (mains et bouquet de fleurs) and “Bouquet of Peace.” Some later products call it a bouquet of friendship. These are labels for a recognisable design and its derivatives, not evidence that Picasso formally renamed the drawing each time it was reproduced. [1] [2] [4]
The public purpose helps explain why so many names include “peace.” The flowers are neither a still life arranged for private contemplation nor a bouquet held by a portrait sitter. They sit between two unseen people in a composition intended to be circulated for a peace gathering. Exchange is the action; colour is the invitation to notice it. Viewers may read friendship, generosity or reconciliation into that action. Such readings are plausible, but there is no surviving statement in the records cited here in which Picasso fixes one exact symbolic meaning for each flower or hand. [3]
The image remains effective because its political message is open enough to travel. The hands do not wear uniforms or carry national flags. Their outlines meet at the stems rather than at a border, and the bouquet is useful as a shared centre even when a print is separated from its original congress wording. That openness also makes the work vulnerable to oversimplification. It should not be described as a timeless children's picture that somehow floated free of 1958 politics. Nor should every cheerful reproduction be treated as a signed original by Picasso. [3]
Seen together, the material record and the design make a more interesting story. A dated coloured-pencil drawing was adapted for a public campaign. Posters and later sheets carried it far beyond the original page. Museums now preserve both archival evidence of the drawing and individual printed versions. The two hands still meet across white space; knowing which object one is looking at lets that direct visual gesture retain its force without sacrificing historical accuracy. [1] [2] [3]
Discussion
Use the evidence and your own close looking to explain your view. These are editorial prompts, not reader comments.
Reader Insights
Do the two hands clearly show giving, receiving or something less settled?
How does the 1958 peace-congress setting change the image’s public meaning?
Which title belongs to the original record, and which circulated later?
Join the Conversation
Which reading best fits the evidence?
References
- Musée national Picasso-Paris, archival photograph of Fleurs et mains and Picasso chronology.
- University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1958 print and Kunstmuseum Den Haag, reproduction after the drawing.
- Swedish government inquiry on the 1958 Stockholm conference and Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster on the poster design.
- Artcurial catalogue of a textless offset print and Neumeister catalogue of a related print.
Image Credits
- Gustave Courbet. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Resized to 1024px; no crop. Source record. Licence.
