Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, France, 1973).
"Visage no. 192". Madoura, 1963.
Glazed ceramic plate, copy 145/150.
With inscription and numbering on the base: "Edition Picasso / Madoura".
Measurements: 25.4 cm (diameter).

This piece is a wonderful and characteristic example of Picasso's prolific ceramic work, a facet of his art that dominated his last decades.

This round glazed earthenware plate is transformed into a canvas for one of Picasso's most recurring themes: the human face. The piece stands out for its apparent simplicity, which hides a masterful composition. The face is deconstructed in its most essential elements, executed with quick, bold and confident brushstrokes. The influence of "primitive" or tribal art is evident, giving the face a totemic, almost mask-like quality. Picasso uses a vibrant, restrained palette of primary colors (red, yellow, blue) on the creamy white background of the plate, all unified by the decisive use of black. Thus, two hypnotic circles with thick black eyelashes stare at the viewer. The nose is a brilliant cubist solution: it is shown simultaneously from the front and in profile. The mouth is reduced to two simple angular strokes (blue and black). The border is topped with a thick black stroke that encloses the composition, turning the utilitarian object into an autonomous artistic support.

This work must be understood within the context of the second creative youth that Picasso experienced in the south of France after World War II. In 1946, Picasso visited the annual ceramics exhibition in Vallauris, a town with a long pottery tradition. He was fascinated by the work of the Madoura workshop, run by Georges and Suzanne Ramié. The following year, in 1947, Picasso began an intense and long-lasting collaboration with the Ramiés that would last for more than two decades. Madoura became his personal laboratory.

Picasso immersed himself in ceramics with explosive energy. He was fascinated by the plasticity of clay and the unpredictable transformation of colors after firing. He saw ceramics not as a minor art, but as a medium for sculpture and painting in three dimensions.

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 café "ElsQuatreGats". 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 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.