Artist: Pablo Picasso
Title: Sujet Colombre, A.R. 435
Medium: Ceramic, White Earthenware with Engraving on Enamel
Size: 6"h x 8.5"w x 4"d
Year: 1959
Edition: 403/500
Inscription: Stamped with Madoura and Edition Picasso stamps, written 'R. 128 Edition Picasso 403/500' on base
Documentation: Includes a gallery certificate of authenticity
Pablo Picasso's "Sujet Colombre [A.R. 435]" reflects the artist's inventive and sustained engagement with ceramic practice during the postwar period, when he worked extensively at the Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris, France. Created in 1959, the work belongs to a significant phase in Picasso's career in which traditional craft forms became a platform for radical pictorial experimentation. Rather than treating ceramics as a subsidiary medium, Picasso approached clay as a site of transformation, merging sculpture, drawing, and painting into a single expressive object.
Picasso's ceramic output from Vallauris has been widely exhibited and is represented in the permanent collections of major institutions, including the Musee Picasso, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; and the Art Institute of Chicago. Works from the Sujet Colombre series exemplify the ways in which Picasso reimagined traditional ceramic forms, collapsing distinctions between fine art and craft and expanding the expressive possibilities of the medium. These ceramics are now recognized as a critical component of his late oeuvre and as influential precedents within twentieth-century studio ceramics.
"Sujet Colombre [A.R. 435]" is a ceramic sculpture in white earthenware with engraved decoration and enamel, created in 1959. The work measures 6 inches in height by 8.5 inches in width by 4 inches in depth and is from an edition of 500, this example numbered 403/500. It is stamped with the Madoura and Edition Picasso stamps and inscribed on the base "R. 128 Edition Picasso 403/500". The work is accompanied by a gallery certificate of authenticity, confirming its authorship, edition, and provenance.
About Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, and ceramicist whose career spanned the early to mid-twentieth century and profoundly shaped modern art. Born in Málaga, Spain, in 1881, Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent from a young age, receiving formal training from his father and later attending the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. Over the course of his life, Picasso produced a vast and varied body of work, exploring multiple styles and mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and ceramics.
Picasso is perhaps best known as a co-founder of Cubism, a revolutionary movement in modern art that he developed alongside Georges Braque in the early 1910s. Cubism challenged traditional notions of perspective and representation, emphasizing the fragmentation of objects into geometric forms and the simultaneous depiction of multiple viewpoints. Picasso's innovations in this period had a lasting impact on the trajectory of twentieth-century art, influencing painting, sculpture, and design worldwide. Beyond Cubism, Picasso's work encompasses periods such as the Blue Period, Rose Period, Neoclassical phase, and Surrealism, each reflecting different emotional, social, and stylistic concerns.
In addition to his painting and sculpture, Picasso made significant contributions to ceramic art. From the late 1940s through the 1970s, he produced thousands of ceramic pieces, including plates, vases, and sculptural vessels, often created in collaboration with the Madoura Pottery workshop in Vallauris, France. His ceramics display the same inventiveness and experimental spirit that characterize his paintings, incorporating bold line work, playful imagery, and a wide range of stylistic references. These works exemplify Picasso's interest in merging fine art with craft, extending his expressive vocabulary into three-dimensional and functional forms.
Picasso's printmaking and drawings are equally notable, spanning etchings, lithographs, and linocuts, often revisiting themes and subjects from his paintings. His prolific output, combined with his willingness to experiment across media, established him as one of the most versatile and influential artists of the twentieth century. Picasso's work has been widely exhibited in major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Musee Picasso in Paris, and continues to be held in prominent public and private collections.
Pablo Picasso's legacy is defined by his relentless experimentation, technical virtuosity, and capacity to reinvent visual language across multiple forms of artistic expression. His contributions to painting, sculpture, printmaking, and ceramics solidify his status as one of the most important and influential figures in modern art history.
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