Atelier Mourlot (Lithography)


Atelier Mourlot was a major lithographic workshop in Paris, directed by Fernand Mourlot. Originally founded in 1852 as a commercial print shop, it was transformed in the 1920s into a studio dedicated to fine art lithography.

A decisive turning point occurred in 1937, when the studio produced two posters after works by Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard for the Maîtres de l’Art Indépendant exhibition at the Petit Palais. The exceptional quality of these prints established the atelier as a leading lithographic workshop in Paris. In the same year, Mourlot began a long-term collaboration with the publisher Tériade, for whom the studio produced numerous illustrated works. The atelier also printed original lithographs for Aimé Maeght for approximately a decade, until the late 1950s, when Maeght established his own graphic atelier in Levallois.

After the Second World War, the atelier became a central site for artist–printer collaboration. A dedicated space within the studio was used by Pablo Picasso, who worked there intensively between 1945 and 1969, producing nearly four hundred lithographs and significantly expanding the possibilities of the medium. The workshop also collaborated with major artists including Georges Braque, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, and Fernand Léger.