{"id":301592,"date":"2025-06-19T06:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T06:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/these-never-before-seen-ceramics-show-how-picasso-mastered-new-art-forms\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T06:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T06:03:09","slug":"these-never-before-seen-ceramics-show-how-picasso-mastered-new-art-forms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=301592","title":{"rendered":"These Never-Before-Seen Ceramics Show How Picasso Mastered New Art Forms"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The artist\u2019s ceramic pieces combined practicality with aesthetics. Now, seven of his hand-painted dishes are heading to the auction block<\/h2>\n
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\n \"Eli\n <\/div>\n
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Eli Wizevich<\/a><\/p>\n

– History Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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Pigeon<\/em>\u00a0(1949) could fetch up to $61,000 at auction.
\n Fabrice Coffrini \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/span>
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Seven never-before-seen ceramic dishes created and painted by\u00a0Pablo Picasso<\/a> are coming to auction this week. Adorned with distinctive depictions of fish, pigeons, a bearded man, a goat and more, the humble dishes are reminders of the artist\u2019s peerless ability to master new art forms, even in later periods of his career.<\/p>\n

The selection on sale at Piguet, an auction house in Geneva, Switzerland, comes from a private collection that was bequeathed to a close friend of Picasso following his\u00a0death<\/a> in 1973. That unnamed friend kept the dishes in his private collection until his own death, and his heirs decided to sell the ceramics in seven separate lots.<\/p>\n

Picasso created all seven pieces at the\u00a0Madoura Pottery Workshop<\/a> in\u00a0Vallauris<\/a>, a seaside town in southern France. Between 1947 and 1971, Picasso created more than\u00a0630 pieces<\/a> at the workshop with the guidance of its founders,\u00a0Georges and Suzanne Rami\u00e9<\/a>, including masterpieces like\u00a0Grand Vase Aux Femmes Voil\u00e9es<\/em><\/a>, a vase that sold for more than $800,000 at auction this spring.<\/p>\n

The pieces going on sale this week come with more modest estimates. The two most expensive\u2014Pigeon<\/em><\/a> (1949) and\u00a0Brooding Pigeon<\/em><\/a> (1947)\u2014are each expected to fetch roughly $36,000 to $61,000. The least expensive\u2014Bull<\/em><\/a> (1957) and\u00a0Bird<\/em><\/a> (1963)\u2014could each go for as little as $18,000.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you step back from Picasso\u2019s work and his drawings, which are becoming practically unaffordable today, you have here original works by Picasso that command a reasonable estimate,\u201d Bernard Piguet, director of the auction house, tells\u00a0Agence France-Presse<\/a> (AFP).<\/p>\n

Pricey or not, all seven pieces are markedly the works of Picasso, capturing an established artist as he translated his skills to a new medium.\u00a0Three Fish<\/em><\/a> (circa 1952) is a long plate with a gentle rim that depicts a blue fish, an orange fish and a red fish in the deceptively simple style that Picasso often toyed with.\u00a0Goat<\/em><\/a>, from around two years earlier, is a more realistic depiction of a white goat in profile. It bears a stamp on the back noting that it\u2019s an \u201cOriginal Picasso print.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Picasso took up ceramics in 1947, he was \u201calready an internationally renowned artist,\u201d Adeline Bisch Balerna, head of paintings and sculptures at Piguet, tells AFP. \u201cHe had already opened up a huge number of avenues for all artists; the great, well-known works had been created, and he was seeking new means of expression for his art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ceramics represented a different kind of craft for the artist, one that combined practicality with aesthetics. He wanted these works to be used as real table settings. <\/strong>As he once\u00a0explained<\/a> to the French culture minister and novelist\u00a0Andr\u00e9 Malraux<\/a>, \u201cI made plates, you can eat on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall at the Madoura ceramics workshop in 1948 in Vallauris<\/p>\n

Reporters Associes \/ Gamma Features via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ceramics have long held both purposes simultaneously, from\u00a0ancient times<\/a> to the\u00a0modern era<\/a>. Picasso was captivated by the possibilities of the medium.<\/p>\n

\u201cCeramics wasn\u2019t only a field of limitless exploration that opened up each time, but a field where Picasso saw himself as an apprentice, where he was forced to forget everything that he knew,\u201d Picasso\u2019s friend and biographer Pierre Daix wrote, according to\u00a0Tribune de Gen\u00e8ve<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Florence Millioud.<\/p>\n

With\u00a0Head of a Bearded Man<\/em><\/a> (1956), Picasso seemed to revel in the materiality of the ceramics, painting scraggles of black hair and white and orange pastel highlights on a brick platter, all covered in engobe. Just as he had done in his\u00a0blue<\/a> and\u00a0rose<\/a> periods and in his innovations in Cubism, Picasso was opening the door for new artists to explore timeless images and ancient methods anew.<\/p>\n

\u201cCeramics weren\u2019t the same after Picasso. He transformed the codes,\u201d Josephine Matamoros, an art historian who curated a 2014 exhibition of Picasso\u2019s ceramics at the French\u00a0National Ceramics Museum<\/a> in S\u00e8vres, says in a\u00a0documentary<\/a>. \u201cCeramics were still ceramics but they were just as much painting, sculptures, engravings\u2014and we find all of that in each piece, which is exceptional.\u201d<\/p>\n

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