Spanish pitcher', white stoneware, polychrome painted, dimensions 18 cm x 12 cm x 26 cm, on the reverse EDITION PICASSO 139/200 MADOURA inscribed and numbered, MADOURA PLEIN FEU and EDITION PICASSO stamped, partially minimally stained, rubbed on the reverse side, Literature: Cat. Rais. Ramié 244, with colour ill. Pablo Picasso is considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His extensive oeuvre includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, graphics, literature and ceramics. During his lifetime, he certainly influenced his close artist colleagues as much as they influenced him - especially since he lived with some colleagues in the famous Parisian Bateau-Lavoir and shared its studios with them. He thus worked on Cubism with George Braque, as well as creating his most famous works Guernica and the Demoiselles d'Avignon. In addition to these world-famous works of art, the 3000 or so ceramics that Picasso made are little known, but no less important. These ceramics were created in an equally creative and almost experimental process as he pursued for his sculptures and paintings. Picasso's ceramics are not just a by-product of his artistic activity, but an artistic opportunity to offer his creativity further possibilities of expression. An enormous body of work was produced with which he wanted to challenge and overcome the existing art system. For by mixing utilitarian objects and works of art, he was able to find a way not to glorify art, but to let it flow into everyday life. Picasso wanted to make his art accessible to a broad public. His ceramics and especially the serial editions enabled him to achieve this goal: through the form of utilitarian ceramics. During a pottery exhibition, the artist met Suzanne and Georges Ramie, the owners of the Madoura ceramics workshop. Picasso made his first experiments with ceramics. He used clay, created fauns and nymphs, decorated plates and platters with his favourite motifs such as the bullfight, women, owls, goats, used unusual supports and developed a white clay mass himself. Time and again, his ceramics reveal how closely Picasso was rooted in the millennia-old history of ceramics. From classical Greek vases with red and black figures to the Etruscan buccheri, the clay vessels of the pre-Hispanic cultures and the popular ceramics from Spain and France. Picasso was familiar with the numerous ceramic objects of the ancient Mediterranean cultures exhibited in the Louvre in Paris, owned many books on ancient art and drew his inspiration - both in terms of the forms and the themes of a large part of his ceramics - from vessels with human or animal forms. The artist even created fictitious "ancient" ceramics and painted archaeological ceramic fragments. It is essential to note at this point that Picasso's ceramics not only refer to the traditions of this art form, but also to his own development as an artist. Through various ceramics, it becomes clear how he uses his creative experiences as a painter, engraver and sculptor and the corresponding motifs of his paintings, lithographs and drawings in the shaping and painting of the stoneware. Likewise, he used his newly gained experience from this work for works of art in painterly form. Thus, he also renewed the specially created motif of the dove, which he designed as a poster for the Paris World Peace Congress in 1949 and which is still considered a worldwide symbol of peace today.