Oiseau au ver

Oiseau au ver is a Picasso ceramic ceramic, catalogued A.R. 172 in Alain Ramié's reference on the edited ceramics, conceived in 1952.0. It comes from the numbered edition of 500 produced at the Madoura pottery in Vallauris. It measures 6.5" diameter.

The Madoura pottery in Vallauris, France, was founded in 1938 by Suzanne and Georges Ramié, part of a wider revival of the ancient Mediterranean pottery town. When Pablo Picasso visited the annual Vallauris ceramics exhibition in 1946 and met the Ramiés, he began working in their studio the following year, opening a chapter of intense ceramic invention that would last until 1971.

In Oiseau au ver Picasso takes up the bird, which in Picasso's hands became a symbol of peace. Like all of the Madoura editions, the piece translates a subject from his painting and drawing into three dimensions, where the ceramic surface and the thrown form become part of the composition. Picasso's ceramics remain among the most accessible points of entry into his late work, prized for uniting a major twentieth-century hand with the everyday language of the potter.