From 1946, Pablo Picasso completely immersed himself in the world of ceramics, avidly probing, manipulating and mastering his new malleable medium, consuming all facets and possibilities that clay presents. Arguably the most prolific artist of the 20th century, Picasso’s bombastic and relentless approach to painting, printmaking, sculpture and drawing was similarly reflected in his thirst to harness the often unpredictable nature of pottery. Executed in 1957, Hibou is a unique example of Picasso’s devotion to form, texture and mark-making, captured in the sweeping curvature of his little owl’s body and controlled application of hand-applied glaze on the verso and recto of his tile. Often exploring the representation of his key motifs, such as minotaurs, fauns and owls, across all mediums of his artistic practice, Picasso’s Hibou continues a dialogue with the ancient traditions of pottery, emerging from the kiln as a tangible realisation of Picasso’s infatuation with clay.

Housed in the collection of Jacqueline Picasso, the present work was created four years after Picasso met his wife at the famed Atelier Madoura. Travelling to the Côte d'Azur in 1946, Picasso was on holiday at Golfe-Juan when on 21 July he visited an exhibition of known local artists and artisans, who were exhibiting their products and artworks in the Provençal town of Vallauris. Travelling to this small town, international craftsmen and artists had been drawn to the area due to the displacement of people during the war; Vallauris became a haven for artistic production which had a long artisanal tradition of using local clay and wood from the pine forest. Succumbed by curiosity, Picasso returned a year later to work again at the ceramic studio there, eventually establishing his ceramic practice firmly in the area.

With its connection to ancient civilisation, pottery provided the ideal medium for Picasso to create ceramic pieces which would refer more holistically to the past, both in medium, form and symbolism. Surviving the test of time, ancient Greek pottery would prove to be a source of great inspiration for Picasso, invoking the swollen forms of jugs, bowls and looped handles in his modern vessels, evident in works such as Owl (Vase) (1947/1948, Musée Picasso Antibes). In the present work, Picasso depicts a hibou, a little owl, through the shaping of his tile and his use of figurative glaze decoration. As an ancient symbol of Antibes and the sacred symbol of Athena, the goddess of wisdom who concealed herself as a bird in battle, Picasso’s owls encompass connotations of intelligence and courage, as well as his fondness for the little creatures. Keeping turtle doves and pigeons at his various residences, Picasso loved animals and birds, and kept a small owl as a pet which would become a great source of inspiration in his paintings, lithographs and ceramics. As described by Françoise Gilot:

‘While Pablo was still working at the Musée d’Antibes, Sima had come to us one day with a little owl he had found in a corner of the museum. One of his claws has been injured. We bandaged it and gradually it healed. 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. We were very nice to him but he only glared at us. Any time we went into the kitchen, the canaries chirped, the pigeons cooed and the turtledoves laughed but the owl remained stolidly silent or, at best, snorted. He smelled awful and ate nothing but mice. Since Pablo’s atelier was overrun with them, I set several traps. Whenever I caught one, I brought it to the owl. As long as I was in the kitchen he ignored the mouse and me. He saw perfectly well in the daytime, of course, in spite of the popular legend about owls, but he apparently preferred to remain aloof. As soon as I left the kitchen, even if only for a minute, the mouse disappeared. The only trace would be a little ball of hair which the owl would regurgitate hours later.

Every time the owl snorted at Pablo he would shout, ‘Cochon, Merde,’ and a few other obscenities, just to show the owl that he was even worse mannered than he was. He used to stick his fingers between the bars of the cage and the owl would bite him, but Pablo’s fingers, though small, were tough and the owl didn’t hurt him. Finally the owl would let him scratch his head and gradually he came to perch on his finger instead of biting it, but even so, he still looked very unhappy. Pablo did a number of drawings and paintings of him and several lithographs as well’ (Françoise Gilot, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, pp. 139 – 40.)

Stimulated by the unpredictability of the medium and the often volatile reactions which occur in the kiln, Picasso deftly adapted to the union of glaze and form, the two being integral to each other to create vital energy within the design. In the present work, we can see the influence of Picasso’s earlier thirties experimentations with plaster at Boisgeloup, whereby he incised and built upon flat surfaces to create visages and creatures, reminiscent of ancient coins. Projecting his painterly cubist distillations into his sculpture work, in the early fifties Picasso toyed with the flattening of perspective in his sculpture, working with two dimensional planes to create shapely works crafted from a variety of mediums, including found objects. In the present work, Picasso incorporates the surface qualities of the medium into the design, leaving the tile partially un-glazed. This is also evident in his 1956 work, The Bathers, his six figure sculptural series which is housed in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, executed a year before the present work. In a 1961 interview in Vallauris, Picasso asserted that sculpture and ceramics ‘are closely related, but of course there is the fluid material of the glaze that adapts itself to the forms, and these forms are coloured; you add paint, and the object becomes different’ (Pablo Picasso quoted in Jean d’Alvez 'Interview with Pablo Picasso', 2 November 1961, in Marie-Laure Bernadac and Androula Michael, Picasso – propos sur l’art, Paris, 1988, p.101). Evocative of the baked earth, sunlight and sea of the Mediterranean, Hibou encapsulates the rich history of the Côte d'Azur through its rich surface quality and vitality, as well as showcasing Picasso’s love of clay.