Partially glazed terre de faïence pitcher painted in black, white and gray, 1952. 385 mm; 15 3/8 inches (height). Edition of 400. With the Edition Picasso and Madoura Plein Feu stamps and inscribed "Edition Picasso Madoura" on the base.
Picasso was 65 years old, already a world famous and immensely successful artist, when he discovered a passion for creating ceramics. He was vacationing at the home of his printer, Louis Fort, in Golfe-Juan, a seaside resort on France's Côte d'Azur, when he decided to visit the annual ceramics exhibition in Vallauris just a few miles away. There he took a particular interest in the Madoura pottery stall and chatted up the ceramicist-owners, Suzanne and Georges Ramié, who invited him back to their workshop after the fair. At the Madoura workshop, Picasso modeled two subjects from fresh clay and left them with the Ramiés to dry. Nearly a year later, the following summer, he returned to Madoura and was delighted to find his two earlier clay sculptures. That summer of 1947, Picasso leaped into ceramic arts with all the intensity which had prior spurred his painting, drawing and printmaking creativity, beginning an incredible 25 year run with ceramics during which he would produce more than 630 different ceramic editions, initially learning the craft from the Ramiés and subsequently developing into a master ceramic artist himself.
Picasso created ceramics in collaboration with the Madoura workshop with the idea of making the pieces accessible and affordable. He would design some 50 different subjects each year; the editions were produced, marketed and sold through the Madoura workshop in Vallauris. Picasso would frequently create the maquette, or the preliminary ceramic design for each edition, and the Madoura ceramicists would work from the maquette to produce the edition. The edition sizes for each subject vary from 50 to 400. In few cases Picasso authorized smaller editions and sometimes produced unique ceramic works at Madoura which were not intended for subsequent editions. His subject matter was typically creative and playful, ranging from animals, like owls and fish, mythologically-inspired and corrida scenes, to face motifs. His first ceramics were more utilitarian in shape, such as plates and bowls, and by the 1950s, as evidenced by this pitcher-like vase, he had adopted more ambitious shapes, with the parts of the objects--like the handles on the vase--incorporated as figural parts, whether arms, legs, necks or torsos. Picasso met Jacqueline Roque, then 27 years old, at the Madoura workshop in 1953, she would become his second wife in 1961 and also a muse for many of his ceramic female face motifs.
This is one of approximately a dozen different two-handled figural vases Picasso created and among these is the most feminine form of the group, with the face and anatomy defined (he returned to the subject again in 1953 with a darker variation, see Ramié 213). Picasso likely used this form less frequently as it was more complicated to produce and the creation of these editions would have been more painstaking for the workshop. This is also among the most sculptural forms of all the editioned ceramics by Picasso. Ramié 141.
