Pablo Picasso

This majestic avian vessel is Picasso’s grand ceramic tribute to his favourite animal: the bird. The artist kept an aviary in his Paris home and often - much to the chagrin of his partners - took pleasure in rescuing injured and orphaned fledglings. While at the Musée d'Antibes, for instance, Picasso adopted an ailing owl and nursed him back to health, affectionately naming him Ubu. In her 1964 memoir My Life with Picasso, Françoise Gilot recalled of Ubu, “We bought a cage for him and when we returned to Paris we brought him back with us and put him in the kitchen with the canaries, the pigeons and the turtledoves. He smelled awful and ate nothing but mice. Every time the owl snorted at Picasso he would shout, Cochon, Merde, and a few other obscenities, just to show that he was even worse-mannered than him, but Picasso’s fingers, though small, were tough and the owl didn’t hurt him. Finally the owl would let him scratch his head and gradually came to perch on his finger instead of biting it..."(pp. 144-45). 

Executed in 1953, the present work pays homage to the owl and is a fine example of the artist’s command over the sculptural medium. The owl was a subject that intensely interested Picasso and appeared in a number of his paintings, prints and ceramics. From an edition of only 25, this particularly inventive ceramic best displays the artist's ability to artfully combine zoomorphic and abstract forms.