On August 15, 1947, Picasso made three pencil-on-paper sketches for three owl-shaped ceramic pieces.[1] The drawings show the vases placed across a cylindrical base and provided with one or two openings, one for the head and the other forming the bird’s tail (Fig. 14). They are sketches for plastic pieces made up from simply assembling whole pots or their parts, without the artist’s intervention in terms of throwing the clay himself. Picasso strives to achieve a form that is aesthetically convincing while also endowed with the physical properties that will enable it to stand up.
Numerous variations on the owl, based on the two forms anticipated in the sketches on the left and right of the sheet, were produced around 1950-51 (Figs. 15-16) and also made into several editions following the prototypes made as single pieces by the artist’s own hand.
In the pen-and-India ink drawings from another previously unpublished sheet dated September 12, 1947 (Fig.17), we find additional important developments of forms that would lead to ceramic pieces. Right away, the smallest sketch on this sheet reminds us of the owls with their bodies –cylinder-shaped, in this case– set across an elevated base, and then the figure of a woman, less stretched out than in the drawings dated July 29, whose arms are represented by handles turned down towards the lower body. This sketch prefigures the major series of woman vases created from late 1947 on by reshaping clay bottles from the Madoura studio’s standard production, with their arms shaped and attached by Picasso and painted by the artist in a large number of different variations (Fig.12). The September 12, 1947 sheet is dominated by a third new form composed of two ovoid shapes with a small neck at the top, kept in balance by two precarious handles (Fig.17). This figuration was recaptured and developed in a serial production, with variations and metamorphoses of the bird form represented in preparatory sketches from September 12 to 30, 1947,[2] and showing, in the series of sketches from September 30 that year, arrangements of the superimposed ovoid shapes that finally led to the realization of the large sculpture of a wading bird, L’Echassier, at the Musée Picasso in Antibes (Figs.18-19).
This piece, a precariously balanced assemblage, constituted a major technical achievement for Picasso and for the team at the Madoura studio. The complete reduction of its expressive means, the pared-down tactile elegance of its shape emanating a solemn air, and its decoration with slips and oxides recalling the models of ancient painted vases with black and red figures grant it an exceptionally prominent position within the ensemble of Picasso’s ceramic work.
Pencil on paper Private collection.
© Succession Picasso 2020.
White earthenware, engraved decoration, added and painted with engobes and oxides under colored glaze (alquifoux).
Picasso Museum, Antibes
© ImageArt, photo Claude Germain
© Succession Picasso 2020.
Vase turned in white earthenware (earthenware), decorated with oxides and engraved on white enamel.
Private collection
© Succession Picasso 2020
Chinese ink Private collection.
© Succession Picasso 2020
Chinese ink. Private collection.
© Succession Picasso 2020.
Terre de faïence blanche, décor peint aux engobes et aux oxydes.
Musée Picasso, Antibes © ImageArt, Photo Claude Germain.
© Succession Picasso.
8 / 10
Summary