CERCLE AU VISAGE

Cercle avec visage is a Picasso ceramic tile, catalogued A.R. 632 in Alain Ramié's reference on the edited ceramics, conceived in 1971.0. It comes from the numbered edition of 500 produced at the Madoura pottery in Vallauris. It measures 5.75" X 5.75".

Between 1947 and 1971 Picasso conceived 633 distinct editioned ceramic designs at the Madoura pottery. The complete body of work was catalogued by Alain Ramié in 1988, and the resulting 'A.R.' number is the reference used by auction houses and collectors worldwide to identify each model.

In Cercle avec visage Picasso takes up the human face — a motif Picasso returned to obsessively across every medium. 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.