Pablo PICASSO : Black background ceramics

Picasso meets Suzanne Ramié of the Madoura workshop in Vallauris during a trip in 1946. Finally and definitively installed in the South of France from 1947, he will start a long and fertile collaboration with the Madoura workshop, which will give birth to one of the richest ceramic productions of any artist in the 20th century. Unlike his contemporary Joan Miro, Picasso is fascinated by the functional as well as the artistic merit of the technique : his works are at the same time functional as well as full art objects.

In the South of France, the artist goes back to the classical themes and motifs that marked his childhood - a true rediscovery of the joy of creation. The Hispano-Moorish style, as well as the Pre-Columbian ceramics, with their zoomorphic and anthropomorphic subjects, undoubtedly also inspired the artist : owls, scenes of bullfighting, all become part of his graphic vocabulary of this time period. Picasso masters the traditional techniques of pottery-making. Nonetheless, the subject allows him to vary the forms and styles : in these two examples, Picasso uses a highly refined black glazed or mate background in order to render the subject in bright, vivid colours.