734 - Pablo Picasso (1881, Málaga – Mougins, near Cannes, 1973)

Pablo Picasso (1881, Málaga – Mougins, near Cannes, 1973) Hibou marron noir Ceramic vase. White body, with brown and black oxide painting on a white enamel ground, featuring incised decoration and a clear glaze. 1951. Height approx. 29.5 cm. One of 300 copies. Handwritten inscription on the base reading “EDITION PICASSO MADOURA,” along with the embossed stamp “Edition Picasso” and an illegible embossed stamp (presumably “Madoura Plein Feu”). Ramié 123. When Pablo Picasso entered the Madoura pottery workshop in Vallauris, in the south of France, in the summer of 1946, one of the most fruitful chapters of his late career began. Together with the workshop owners, Suzanne and Georges Ramié, he explored a medium that had been unfamiliar to him until then and discovered in ceramics a field where painting, drawing, and sculpture converged in an unusual way. In the decades that followed, thousands of unique pieces were created—along with a series that made Picasso’s art accessible to a new, broader audience: selected designs were produced in limited editions at the workshop based on his sketches. Among the motifs that Picasso repeatedly returned to during these years, the owl holds a special place. The bird also accompanied him in his daily life: in 1946, Picasso took in a small, injured owl in Antibes, which became a permanent part of his household. He named it “Ubu” after Alfred Jarry’s stage character from *Ubu roi*, and it is depicted in numerous paintings, drawings, and ceramics. The owl, a symbol of wisdom since antiquity and at the same time a creature of the night, becomes a figure of great presence in his work—sometimes stern and frontal, sometimes humorous and playful. The vase “Hibou marron noir,” created in 1951, demonstrates how effortlessly Picasso allows the vessel and the image to merge. The bulbous, twisted body of the vessel itself becomes an owl: a bold black line extends downward from the rim of the opening to form the beak, while on the left and right, two large eyes, outlined multiple times, gaze directly at the viewer. Brown dots are scattered across the light-colored chest, into which Picasso sketches the plumage with just a few incisions; on the sides, the black wings wrap around the body, and at the base sit the claws, also finely incised. Using just two colors on a white background—with lines, planes, and incisions—a figure of astonishing immediacy emerges—at once a stark pictorial symbol and a creature full of humor. Provenance: Private collection, Berlin Taxation: subject to margin scheme (VAT: Margin Scheme).