Sat, Jun 14, 2025 page5

• Unseen Picasso ceramics to be up for sale next week

  • AFP, GENEVA
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  A clutch of one-off and hitherto unseen ceramic plates and dishes by Pablo Picasso are to go under the hammer in Geneva on Thursday next week.

  Emblematic motifs from Picasso’s artistic universe — pigeons, fish, a goat, a bull and a bird adorn the colorful plates and dishes.

  “It’s a truly exceptional collection. The plates and dishes we have here are real Picasso works,” said Bernard Piguet, director of the Piguet auction house in Geneva.

  

  Piguet auction house founder Bernard Piguet holds a rectangular earthenware dish, which was engraved with a knife, named Pigeon made by Pablo Picasso, at the auction house in Geneva on Thursday last week.

  Photo: Fabrice Coffrini, AFP

  “These unique pieces belonged to Picasso’s estate, and in the early 1980s, his heirs gave them to one of their friends,” he said.

  The close friend, a French art lover whose name has not been revealed, kept them until his death. His heirs have decided to put the ceramics up for sale.

  Made between 1947 and 1963 in the Madoura workshop in Vallauris on the southeast French coast, the ceramic artworks are being exhibited to the general public for the first time ahead of the auction.

  ‘REASONABLE PRICES’

  The seven pieces are being sold in separate lots.

  Two large platters decorated with pigeons are expected to fetch between 30,000 and 50,000 Swiss francs (US$36,900 to US$61,485). A third plate depicting three blue, pink and brick-colored fish on a white background, resembling a child’s drawing, is estimated at SF20,000 to SF30,000.

  A thin brick, titled Head of a Bearded Man, and painted with ceramic pastels in yellow, white, garnet, brown, blue orange and green, has the same estimate.

  Glazed on a painted background in shades of gray, brown and black, a terracotta plate depicting a goat’s head bears the prestigious stamp “Original Picasso print” on the back. It is valued at SF20,000 to SF30,000.

  The two others feature a bull on a hexagonal terracotta tile (SF15,000 to SF20,000) and a stylized bird on a plate painted in black and white (SF15,000 to SF25,000).

  “It’s a lot,” Piguet said of the price.

  “But don’t forget that these are works of art in their own right and unique pieces” without replicas, he said.

  “If you step back from Picasso’s work and his drawings, which are becoming practically unaffordable today, you have here original works by Picasso that command a reasonable estimate,” Piguet said.

  The house is also auctioning two Picasso works “never before seen on the art market,” from the same family friend’s collection: Serenade (1919), an Indian ink and watercolor painting estimated at SF20,000 to SF30,000, and the pencil drawing Famille balzacienne (1962), valued at SF80,000 to SF120,000.

  Picasso was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He created thousands of plates, platters, vases, pitchers and other earthenware utensils in the Madoura ceramics studio.

  UNSEEN KLEIN

  The auction would is also to include one of French artist Yves Klein’s first blue monochromes, its first appearance on the art market, the auction house said.

  From 1959, Monochrome bleu sans titre (IKB 328), estimated at SF100,000 to SF150,000, is painted in International Klein Blue, the deep blue hue developed by the artist himself.

  “In daylight, it really has this luminous blue, this completely fascinating Klein blue. And when you put it indoors, you see it as a dark blue, almost midnight blue,” Piguet said.

  The piece comes from the collection of Swiss artist couple Muriel and Gerald Minkoff, who liked to exchange their works with their contemporaries.

  It was discovered by their successors in their Geneva apartment, Piguet said.
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