Pablo Picasso with a glass object of Egidio Costantini, La Californie, Cannes 1961. Photo: Edward Quinn, © edwardquinn.com © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024
‘This remote matter, springing from fire’
Picasso y el vidrio de Murano
‘In his sharp, round, black eyes firmly attached to his head like pins, one can feel the “excessive fondness” he has for this gift of improvisation with which heaven has blessed him’, wrote the journalist Lisa Ponti in the Domus magazine in 1949, praising Pablo Picasso’s inventiveness and his recent ceramic pieces. An unceasing desire to discover new means of expression, as well as a need to return to past experiences and a constant eagerness to explore all forms spurred the artist to extend his inspiration to the art of Murano glass. He turned his attention to it in the early 1950s during his stay in Vallauris, while working on ceramics. As is suggested by Egidio Costantini’s words in the title, written in a letter addressed to Picasso in 1954, it seemed almost inevitable that he would come across the fascinating possibilities of glass.
Murano, a centre of attention
Invited by the gallery owner Egidio Costantini to become involved in the Centro Studio Pittori nell’Arte del Vetro di Murano (which later became Fucina degli Angeli). This ambitious Venice-based project was designed to enable contemporary artists to create artworks in glass in collaboration with the master glassmakers of Murano and held international exhibitions in which artists such as Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Max Ernst, Lucio Fontana, Oskar Kokoschka and Le Corbusier took part, among others. Picasso sent to Venice his first drawings, which were the basis for creating glass objects with a marked artistic value albeit made from a material traditionally associated with craft production and practice.
Pablo Picasso and Egidio Costantini, 1954 © All rights reserved © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024
Between ceramics, sculpture and painting
Picasso’s participation in the Venetian initiative was in line with his interest in forms of expression linked to local knowhow and his renewed fascination with ancient Mediterranean cultures closely related to the experience of ceramics, from which he borrowed for his models produced in glass. Forms such as birds, condors, bulls, goats, owls and Tanagra figurines, taken from the pieces executed in the south of France, were reinterpreted in Murano by contrasting transparency with opacity, with corrupted effects, or through the exaltation of volumes.
The themes that dominate Picasso’s compositions – such as mythology, animals and still life – have their equivalents in his Murano glass creations and therefore recall references that go beyond ceramics and are drawn from his entire creative universe: small sculptures made of blue glass, which almost have the appearance of archaeological remains, are directly related to the small figures of fauns, nymphs and women modelled in clay, just as the fish, amphoras and doves, genuinely three-dimensional glass pieces, are taken from his pictorial and graphic works.
Pablo Picasso. Standing Woman, Vallauris, fall 1947. Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. Photo: Marc Domage © Museo Picasso Málaga © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024
One of the first pieces crafted for him by the Murano masters is entitled Burlesque. Dating from 1954, it is inspired by the ceramic models of two-handled zoomorphic vases with a bird-like structure which began to be modelled in 1947, for instance the Owl with Head of a Faun in the collection of the Museo Picasso Málaga, The glass object, of which there are, however, different versions, is based on the same structure as the ceramic piece designed by Picasso and displays the same details, albeit with more sculptural results.
Left: Pablo Picasso. Owl with Head of a Faun, Vallauris, fall 1947. Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Christine Ruiz-Picasso. Photo: Rafael Lobato © Museo Picasso Málaga © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024 . Right: Pablo Picasso and Egidio Costantini, Amphora, 1962. Collection Attilia Zava - Museo del vetro d’artista. Fondazione Oderzo Cultura, Oderzo, Italy.
Whether it was interpreting new forms or reinterpreting existing ones, Picasso never focused on technique but observed the material as a means of artistic expression and contributed to the emergence of a new sensibility even in the field of the applied arts.
Text: Marianna Rossi, student of the Dottorato Nazionale in Heritage Science, Sapienza Università di Roma, as part of her study visit to the Centro de Estudios e Investigación at the Museo Picasso Málaga from May to November 2024 in connection with her doctoral thesis La ricezione dell’arte e della produzione vetraria veneziana tra gli anni Cinquanta e Ottanta del Novecento: esposizioni, gallerie, istituzioni e protagonisti, directed by Stefania Portinari, Professoressa Associata in Storia dell’Arte Contemporanea, Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia.
