Violación
Pablo Picasso
Violación, 09.07.1931
Suite Vollard – Miscelánea
© Pablo Picasso: Sucesión Pablo Picasso / VEGAP, Madrid, 2021
© Fundación MAPFRE COLLECTIONS
Technique
Copper, etching on Montval laid paper
Dimensions
Without a frame: 22,1 x 31,2 cm
With frame: 34 x 44,5 cm
Inventory
FM001614
Description
The Suite
Ambroise Vollard met Picasso on the Malaga-born artist’s second trip to Paris in 1901. From this point onwards, Vollard began to regularly acquire the artist’s works, above all in his blue and rose period. Picasso began to paint him every time he visited him, with the idea of creating a series of paintings but the art dealer’s sudden death in a road accident in 1939 interrupted this project and Picasso only managed to make three portraits which today complete the ninety seven etchings known as the Suite Vollard. The series has 100 copper engravings made between 1930 and 1937 with varying themes and which do not have a precise chronological order. Picasso employed a wide range of techniques in these etchings: burin, etchings, aquatint, gouache, drypoint and even the combination of several different techniques.
In addition to the three portraits of Vollard, dated in 1937, we also find 27 diversely-themed plates, five dedicated to the Batalla del amor (Battle of love) (1933); four on Rembrandt (7 to 31 January 1934); 46 with the theme of El taller del escultor (The sculptor’s studio) (41 made between March and the 5 May 1933 and 5 between January and March 1934); 11 on the Minotauro (Minotaur) (17 May to 18 June 1933) and 4 more on the theme of the Minotauro ciego (blind Minotaur) (22 September to 23 October 1934).
The vast majority of the subjects that feature in the Suite Vollard are present throughout Picasso’s work, but looking through them again transforms them and lends them a fuller meaning.
Females
The sculptor’s gaze, which relates to that of the viewer/sculptor contemplating the work from the outside, becomes the protagonist. Women talking, nude or seated. The models always seem removed from the events occurring around them. Sometimes they are involved in some kind of an activity, such as in En el baño (In the bath) and in other prints they are watching drowsily.
The motifs always reveal intimate and toilette scenes which were often depicted by Cézanne, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
However, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec’s toilette scenes are more private and intimate: they have their backs to us, far removed from our gaze, they are washing a basin or drying their hair. Picasso’s scenes are set in a more classical atmosphere and are not in any way anecdotal. In his scenes there are no towels, no basins, and we are unable to locate the exact space the women occupy; in this sense this Malaga-born artist’s work is more akin to that of Cézanne’s bathers.
When FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE acquired the Suite Vollard by Pablo Picasso, the most important series of etchings from the first half of the 20th century, it was consistent with the hallmarks of our artistic collection and confirmed our support for works on paper, as well as our commitment to housing the most important artists in Spanish art of the said period: although the fact that we also acquired drawings from important artists of the international avant-garde at the same time, such as Paul Klee, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Schwiters and Francis Picabia demonstrated the new path our collection would take.
The Suite Vollard is one of the great works of art of the 20th century. Its prints demonstrate the best of Picasso, an artist who had achieved international acclaim and was aware of all the prevailing trends but knew how to confer his recognizable signature style on his creations, which transcended the world of the specialists and was recognized by the general public;a Picasso who, moving beyond painting, establishes himself as a sculptor, ceramist and engraver. These prints house a compendium of the recurring themes of his work: love, violence, the difficulties of artistic creation, organized into a crescendo that results in an iconography very similar to that of Guernica.
The wide range of themes and techniques of these prints led to the fragmentation of the series. Our Foundation is proud to house a complete collection and to be able to disseminate it in countries which have not yet had the chance to enjoy this masterpiece of universal art.
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