Picasso. Ceramic Magician

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain. However, he spent most of his working life in France. Picasso’s works have various influences because he never stuck to a path he had taken. Experiments and explorations continued to follow each other for the rest of his life: in style, in materials and methods. No other artist in the twentieth century switched mediums so easily: from oil paint to wood or bronze, graphic techniques or glass and of course ceramics.

Picasso, he developed from an impressionist painter to a ceramist. He was familiar with working with various materials from an early age, including ceramics. One of his friends, whom he met around 1900 in the small Spanish artists’ colony in Montmartre, was the ceramist Paco Durrio (1868-1940). Through Durrio he was introduced to ceramics and subsequently sculpted several heads in clay that were cast in bronze. Later, in the 1920s, he briefly collaborated with the ceramist Jean van Dongen, with whom he painted at least two vases.

The ceramic works provide insight into Picasso’s versatility as a ceramicist and his entrepreneurial spirit because, in addition to unique pieces, he also developed various series.

In 1948, Picasso’s first ceramic exhibition took place with more than a hundred ceramic objects, painted bowls and saucers. A selection of these objects can be seen in Royal Delft Museum from October 10, 2023 to May 19, 2024.