Visage masculin reflects the enduring creative spirit of the artist who created it. With its expressive use of line and vibrant application of colour, Pablo Picasso creates a composition exemplative of the playful and joyous spirit that defines the artist’s works from the 1950s and 1960s.

Picasso first became acquainted with the Madoura ceramics workshop and its owners, Georges and Suzanne Ramié, in Vallauris in 1946 when he went to view an exhibition there. This visit would mark the beginning of a new chapter in the artist’s œuvre. Working with clay provided the artist with a material that matched the versatility of his imagination. Moreover, by working with ceramics the artist could combine his sculptural and painterly practice and many of his ceramics display lively colour palettes reflective of the light of the Mediterranean. In Visage masculin, Picasso artfully marries sculpture and painting to create a hybrid work of art that embodies the artist’s enduring vision and tireless desire to reinvent artistic expression. Picasso’s son Claude Picasso has vivid memories of the creative process involved in the production of these ceramics: ‘Working with the primal elements fire and earth must have appealed to him because of the almost magical results. Simple means, terrific effect. How ravishing to see colours sing after internal fires have given them life. The owls managed a wink now. The bulls seemed ready to bellow. The pigeons, still warm from the electric kiln, sat proudly brooding over their warm eggs. I touched them. They were alive really. The faces smiled. You could hear the band at the bullfight’ (C. Picasso, in Picasso: Sculptor/Painter (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1994, p. 223).

The present work boasts impressive provenance having remained with the artist until his death before moving from the estate into the collection of Bernard Picasso. It comes to the market now from a private collection, where it has resided for almost forty years.