Artist: Pablo Picasso
Title: Oiseau Polychrome; ‘Polychrome Bird’
Medium: Original Photo Lithograph, 1967
Dimensions: 26.5 x 19 in, 67.3 x 48.3 cm

Photo lithographic print of Picasso's ceramic 'Polychrome Bird'. Picasso’s interest in making ceramics began after visiting a pottery exhibition in Vallauris, on the French Riviera, in 1946. He liked one stand in particular and sought out the stallholders - Suzanne and Georges Ramié, who invited him to their workshop, the Madoura Pottery workshop, in Vallauris. While there, Picasso made three pieces which he left to dry and bake. A year later the artist returned to see how the pieces had turned out. He was delighted with their quality and wanted to make more. The Ramiés agreed and an area of the workshop was provided to Picasso. Immediately he started work, inspired by his portfolio of sketches. So began a long and very productive partnership between Picasso and Madoura.

Picasso started making prints early in his career and mastering the traditional techniques of intaglio and lithography which he integrated in his artistic repertoire. Then, while he was based in Paris he had access to the Ateltier Mourlot and worked closely with the master printers on etchings and lithographs. As with the painting and drawing his print making methods reflected the ease, and indeed the speed, with which he produced his imagery, reworking a theme until he had exhausted its possibilities.

Galerie Filali is pleased to collaborate with our personal friend Galerie Mourlot, New York, to present a collection of rare lithographs from legendary Parisian printing house Atelier Mourlot. Founded in Paris in 1852, Atelier Mourlot has been synonymous with fine art lithography for over 150 years. From 1930, under the direction of the founder’s grandson, Fernand Mourlot, leading artists were invited to the studio to collaborate on traditional limestone lithography. For painters like Picasso, the medium provided an exciting new form of expression.

Picasso met Fernand Mourlot in October 1945 after much encouragement from Henri Matisse and Georges Braque. As they predicted, Picasso soon became obsessed with the possibilites of lithography and amazed the Mourlot team with his artistic audacity and talent. He proceeded to make many innovative experiments on the limestones. He would stay at the Mourlot print workshop for several months at a time, 12 hours a day, and over the course of 20 years he created nearly 400 lithographs

Each individual work of art comes with a Certificate of Provenance, signed, dated, stamped, and numbered by Eric Mourlot. Stored in a clear protective sleeve accompanying your piece, this Certificate of Provenance is recognized by all the major auction houses should you care to resell at any point. This ensures the validity of its origin and its being in the Mourlot archives since its production.