0. Introduction
Hello, and welcome to the MMCA exhibition Picasso Ceramics.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, so commemorative exhibitions are being held around the world.
The MMCA is hosting this exhibition of Picasso’s ceramics as a way to revisit the artist’s ingenious and free-spirited creativity.
What do you know about Picasso?
Many of you may know him as a pioneer of Cubism and a genius of modernist art.
Picasso was a passionate creator who experimented with all sorts of diverse media and genres. Along with painting he worked in sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, and theater design.
Ceramics offered a new challenge that Picasso took up in his later years while still at the peak of his painting career.
He became captivated with ceramics as an art for combining the sculptural nature of molding clay and the painterly aspect of drawing and coloring the surfaces. Of course, ceramics was all the more exciting for Picasso since it is born in fire. Picasso had a far-reaching impact on not only twentieth century modernist painting, but also on ceramics.
This exhibition explores Pablo Picasso’s work in clay by presenting 107 of his ceramic pieces. The works on display were selected from the museum’s Lee Kun-hee Collection, which is comprised of donations made in 2021 from the late Samsung Group chairman’s estate.
It traces Picasso’s journey in ceramics and the artistic spirit it demonstrates, a spirit that first bloomed in the southern French city of Vallauris in 1946 when he took up the art form in earnest.
Picasso once said that he dreamed of women using the water vessels that he made when going to collect water from springs.
It is hoped that the exhibition will offer visitors a chance to help fulfill Picasso’s wish large numbers of people could be able to enjoy his art through ceramics and come to appreciate the full spectrum of his work.
