PABLO PICASSO
25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973)

Painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the Bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.

While vacationing in Southern France in the summer of 1946, Picasso made the acquaintance of Georges and Suzanne Ramie, owners of Madoura Pottery in the town of Vallauris.

Like his work in sculpture, the ceramic medium allowed Picasso to experiment in three dimensions and explore the variety of colors, textures, glazes, decorations and finishes. For an artist whose appetite for innovation was seemingly limitless, ceramics quickly became an important part of his oeuvre.