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May 14,2006 - May 21,2006 |
The 'Water, Fire and Earth' of Picasso
Ceramics created by Andalusian master on display in Teramo and Rome exhibition
Originally Published: 2006-05-07
Ceramic works by Pablo Picasso are on display in Teramo and will then move to Rome. Le ceramiche di Picasso. Acqua, fuoco e terra ("Picasso's ceramics. Water, fire and earth") is the title of this exhibition that will run until May 31 in Abruzzo.
It includes 64 pieces (vases, plates and pitchers), sometimes shaped like bulls, hinting at the Spanish artist's pictorial world. The pieces present the artistic style of the Andalusian master, possibly the greatest artist of the 20th century. Those displayed were done between 1947 and 1964, during the most significant period of Pablo Picasso's ceramic art: apparently, ceramics was chosen as a new resource useful toward his intention of breaking away from artworks as unique and mostly inaccessible items, by creating a new language of expression. On this basis, Picasso's ceramic art took shape, with the author discovering a theretofore unexplored universe of new shapes and decorations among vases, plates and tiles.
It was in the workshops of Vallauris ("Valley of Gold") on the Côte d'Azur that Picasso, in his adult age, devoted himself to the creation of ceramic artworks. The subjects were those that most often return in his work: centaurs, doves, goats, women and men, bullfighting scenes, masks, horses, animal figures. This diverse world, disassembled and reassembled in synthetic form with reversed plans and surfaces, appears on anthropomorphic vases, plates, serving platters, tiles of unmatched beauty.
Picasso did his earliest ceramics in the workshop of a friend, sculptor and ceramist Paco Durrio. At Durrio's home, Picasso had admired ceramics done by his friend Gauguin. From the latter, who considered his ceramics like sculptures and therefore "an integral art where shape, material and decoration form a whole," Picasso took the idea of raising ceramics from simple crafts to works of art. There is no doubt that the great Spaniard's ceramics are, in addition to a representative sample of his adult production, works of art of great value in themselves. In 1946 Picasso took up ceramics with the passion of a kid and the awareness of a great and mature artist. Terracotta and its plasticity led Picasso to discover a new artistic language.
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