Title

Pablo Picasso: The Vollard Suite [1988].

Venues

National Gallery Of Australia (25 July 1998 – 10 September 1998)

Date

(1998)

Summary

Single-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (ACT). Prints.

Curator

Gilmour, Pat.

Web address

https://nga.gov.au/exhibitions/picasso-vollard-su…

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

In 1984 the Australian National Gallery, helped by funds from corporate appeal, acquired the Vollard Suite by Picasso (1881–1973), perhaps the most famous graphic suite of the twentieth century by its most celebrated artist.

The set of prints is named after the picture dealer Ambroise Vollard, who asked the Parisian master-printer Roger Lacourière to begin editioning it in June 1936. Vollard was preparing to publish the Suite when he was killed in a road accident in July 1939. When it was eventually distributed by another dealer after World War Il, the Suite comprised one hundred etchings and engravings, ninety-six of which had been made between 1930 and 1934. One more plate was added in 1936 and finally three 1937 portraits of Vollard, originally intended for a separate publication. The Suite was therefore not a specific response to a commission but a selection from his graphic output that Picasso probably exchanged with Vollard for works by other artists. Nevertheless, the Suite's various themes do form a coherent statement when interpreted in the context of Picasso's work as a whole.

Several sheets in the Vollard Suite follow on from the illustrations to important books in the Gallery’s collection completed by Picasso during the same period. The Gallery also owns individual graphic images that deal with the Suite's main themes, the classical artist in the studio and the mythical bullman, the Minotaur. These were personas that Picasso adopted to convey his feelings at a crucially important time in his personal life.

[Gallery media, 1989]

Last Updated

05 Aug 2024