Good artists copy, great artists steal, they say. Pablo Picasso didn’t need to do either. And yet, his paintings, ranging in style from realism to neo-expressionism, have always fetched exorbitant amounts. If the Garçon a La Pipe sold for $104 million in 2004, his Nude, Green Leaves and Bust went for $106.5 million in 2010, the third-highest price for a work of art sold at auction.
Happily, lovers of art don’t have to be blindfolded, and dumbfounded, while they listen to the knock of the hammer when it comes to all of the master’s work. Or so people thought. At a recent auction of Impressionist, Modern Art and Surrealist works by Christie’s, 71 lots comprised unique ceramics by Picasso. It is believed that the artist visited a pottery exhibition in Vallauris, in the South of France, in the summer of 1946 and decided to try his hand at a totally different art form.
Highlights at the auction were two exceptional ceramics both from very small editions: Grande tête de femme au chapeau orné (A.R. 518), a terracotta plaque executed in a numbered edition of 50 (estimate: £30,000-50,000), and Oiseaux et Poissons (A.R. 291), a ceramic vase conceived in 1955 and executed in a numbered edition of 25 (estimate: £40,000-60,000).
The terracotta plaque was bought by an Asian collector for £110,500. Picasso’s Service Poisson, which had been estimated to sell for £30,000-50,000, went to a US buyer for £80,500. A small vase with an owl from an edition of 200, which had sold in 2012 for a triple-estimate £16,900 and come back with a £7,000 estimate, sold for £72,000.