Pablo Picasso Lot n° 1

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) Little Owl, 1949 Partially glazed earthenware pitcher. Stamps: "Madoura plein feu" and "D'Après Picasso". Edition of 200 referenced by Alain Ramié under the n°82 of his catalog. Provenance : collection of Isère, acquired in Juan-les-Pins in the years 1950-60. Bibliography: Alain Ramié, "Picasso: Catalogue of the Edited Ceramic Works 1947-1971", Madoura Editions, Vallauris, 1988, n°82. Settled in the south of France with his partner Françoise Gilot since the end of the war, Pablo Picasso discovered the production of Suzanne and Georges Ramié during an exhibition of pottery in Vallauris, in 1946. At the invitation of the couple, Picasso rediscovered the possibilities of this material that he had known since his youth in Barcelona, when he painted decorative plates in oil. He modeled a small head of a faun and two bulls that he found the following year in the Madoura studio. Seduced by the result, Picasso began a collaboration with the Ramié. If he proposes some forms, he mainly takes again the repertory of Suzanne. His potteries published in small series popularize his work. "I made plates, you are told? They are very good ... we can eat in it," he wrote to André Malraux (Bruno Gaudichon and Josephine Matamoros "Picasso ceramist and the Mediterranean," Paris, Gallimard, 2013, p. 19). Picasso has fun with this medium by diverting traditional forms, as our two pieces show. A pitcher becomes an owl, in homage to Ubu, the night bird that never left him, when a circular dish becomes a face.