Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, France, 1973).
"Visage de face", ca.1963.
Ceramic plate. Atelier Madoura, copy 6/100.
With stamps "Madoura Plein Feu / Empreinte originale Picasso" and hand numbered on the back.
Catalogued in: Ramié, Alain. Picasso Catalogue of ceramic works published 1947-1971. Madoura: Madoura Gallery, 1988. Catalogued and illustrated as catalog raisonné no. 508.
Measurements: 26 cm in diameter.

Since Picasso discovered ceramics with his brilliant style in Vallauris, this village became the great city of ceramics in France. In this ceramic plate he uses simple, jagged lines to create an intriguing yet sympathetic face. With a playful spirit and a strong sense of texture, Picasso removes from the face anything that distracts from its basic elements: mouth, nose and eyes. The nose consists of two parallel vertical lines, while the eyes are small circles and the mouth is a slightly arched horizontal line. Diagonal lines run across this face, encouraging us to use our imagination to create an identity for these marks, be it a beard or battle scars.

Vallauris and Picasso are two names forever linked since 1946. The artist had already known the town in 1936, but it was after World War II, in July 1946, that he became infatuated with ceramics. He was spending a vacation in Golfe Juan-les Pins, a nearby town, and after visiting Madoura's workshop, heir to a long family tradition of ceramic work, the artist began a frenetic production that gave birth to thousands of pieces in the following decades.

Creator of Cubism together with Braque, Picasso began his artistic studies in Barcelona, at the Provincial School of Fine Arts (1895). Only two years later, in 1897, Picasso had his first solo exhibition at the "Els Quatre Gats" café. Paris was to become Pablo's great goal and in 1900 he moved to the French capital for a brief period of time. When he returned to Barcelona, he began to work on a series of works in which the influences of all the artists he had known or whose work he had seen could be seen. He is a sponge that absorbs everything but retains nothing; he is searching for a personal style. Between 1901 and 1907 he developed the Blue and Pink Stages, characterized by the use of these colors and by their subject matter with sordid, isolated figures, with gestures of sorrow and suffering. The painting of these early years of the twentieth century was undergoing continuous changes and Picasso could not remain on the sidelines. He became interested in Cézanne, and based on his example he developed a new pictorial formula together with his friend Braque: Cubism. But Picasso did not stop there and in 1912 he practiced collage in painting; from that moment on, anything goes, imagination became the master of art. Picasso is the great revolutionary and when all the painters are interested in cubism, he is concerned with the classicism of Ingres. The surrealist movement of 1925 did not catch him unawares and, although he did not participate openly, it served as an element of rupture with the previous, introducing in his work distorted figures with great force and not exempt of rage and fury. As with Goya, Picasso was also greatly influenced by his personal and social situation at the time of his work. His relationships with women, often tumultuous, will seriously affect his work. However, what had the greatest impact on Picasso was the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the bombing of Guernica, which led to the creation of the most famous work of contemporary art. Paris was his refuge for a long time, but the last years of his life were spent in the south of France, working in a very personal style, with vivid colors and strange shapes. Picasso is represented in the most important museums around the world, such as the Metropolitan, the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London or the Reina Sofia in Madrid.