
On view
Still Life with Glass and Knife
Vallauris, October 28, 1947
Red earthenware painted with slips
32 x 38 cm
Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Christine Ruiz-Picasso MPM1.69
Françoise Gilot and Picasso’s first son Claude was born on 15 May 1947. Months later Picasso began working at the Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris. He showed great interest in the master potters’ various techniques, especially modelling, turning and glazing. His gestural language and inventiveness became fully adapted to the properties of ceramics. Between 1947 and 1948, Picasso produced nearly two thousand pieces at the Ramiés’ workshop.
‘That day Picasso took possession of a place of his own in our workshop, that venerable workshop hundreds of years old in which so many generations of potters down through the centuries have fashioned thousands and thousands of everyday objects in the honest clay of Vallauris. Like these potters, he sat down at his bench and – exacting, diligent, alert, almost feverish, taciturn too – began his first piece, the forerunner of the multitude of pieces he was to shape throughout these long years of hard, ceaseless work.’
RAMIÉ, Georges. Picasso’s Ceramics. New York: Viking Press, 1976, pp. 14–17

Learn more
What was happening in 1947?
- ‘Picasso, Recent Paintings’ opens at the MoMA
- The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is established
- The transistor is invented in the United States
- Mexican women are granted the right to vote in municipal elections