Pablo Picasso: The Vollard Suite

2 - 16 December 2023

The Suite Vollard comprises one hundred prints made from copperplates engraved by Picasso between 1930 and 1937, a period that marked a new turning point in the artist's life: the first major retrospectives of his work, in 1932, consecrated his professional success, while on the private front his passionate affair with a new muse, the young Marie-Thérèse Walter, ended up separating the couple he had formed since 1917 with his wife Olga.

 

At Boisgeloup, Picasso had installed the press of the retiring engraver Louis Fort, on which Ovid's Metamorphoses had been printed. It was in this propitious environment that Picasso set to work, day and night, on the Suite Vollard, which allows us to approach what animated the artist at the time, from the lightest to the darkest. At the end of 1935, Picasso definitively left Boisgeloup, which reverted to his first wife Olga and remains in the care of his heirs today. The Suite is a kind of visual diary in which the artist reveals his everyday concerns, his own mythology and his reflexions on the act of creating. The one hundred engravings follow an irregular rhythm - 1933 is intense, 1935 absent - underlining the vital momentum of the work.

 

We show here two of the most important plates from the Suite Vollard: the Faune dévoilant une dormeuse, made after Rembrandt's Jupiter and Antiope from 1659, and Minotaure aveugle guidé par Marie-Thérèse au pidgeon dans la nuit étoilé.  

  • At the time of the Suite Vollard, Picasso was in love with Marie-Thérèse while trying to keep his marriage with...

    Minotaure aveugle guidé par Marie-Thérèse au pidgeon dans une nuit étoilée, 1934. 

    At the time of the Suite Vollard, Picasso was in love with Marie-Thérèse while trying to keep his marriage with Olga Khokhlova. The figure of the Minotaur, a hybrid, was perhaps a way of reconciling his contradictory emotions, between love, desire and rage. Unlike the other representations of the Minotaur in the Suite Vollard, showing the monster at the moment of his death or in amorous encounters, Blind Minotaur guided by a young girl with a pidgeon reveals another facet of the myth.

    In a reversal of the Ariadne legend, this time the Minotaur is led into the labirynth by the young fille holding a dove. The monster is tamed, becoming an figure of pathos. The young girl's features identify her with Marie-Thérèse. It is a vision of hope at the end of the labirynth, of the power of love to transform the monster. If Marie-Thérèse is a representation of sensual pleasure for Picasso in most of his images of her, here it is tenderness that takes precedence. The sailors watching the scene are reminiscent of the images of Theseus and his crew.

    A final interpretation is still possible: faced with the rise of fascism and the spectre of civil war in his native Spain, Picasso gives, in The Blind Minotaur Guided by a Pigeon Girl, an image of the fragile peace in the Europe of those years.
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  • Picasso aimait se mesurer aux maîtres anciens, tout en les célébrant. Ce sujet, l'un des plus connus de la suite...

    Fane dévoilant un dormeuse, 1936

    Picasso aimait se mesurer aux maîtres anciens, tout en les célébrant. Ce sujet, l'un des plus connus de la suite Vollard, a été créé d'après le célèbre Jupiter et Antiope de Rembrandt datant de 1659. Rembrandt était connu comme un maître de l'estampe et les références au maître hollandais abondent dans la Suite Vollard, qui a été la première tentative à grande échelle de Picasso dans le domaine de l'estampe.

     

    Le motif d'un personnage regardant un autre personnage dormir revient dans l'art de Picasso tout au long de sa carrière. Les variations comprennent des scènes avec deux femmes, un homme et une femme, et une créature mythique avec une femme. Les figures féminines ont souvent été inspirées par les femmes qui faisaient partie de sa vie à l'époque. La persistance de ce thème s'explique notamment par le fait que Picasso travaillait la nuit et qu'il avait tout le loisir d'observer ses amantes dormir.

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