Picasso Ceramics from the Rosenbaum Collection explores a fascinating and often overlooked chapter in the career of Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. While renowned for revolutionizing modern art through Cubism and other innovations, Picasso also devoted extraordinary energy to ceramics after 1947, creating nearly 4,000 works over the course of 25 years. Drawn from the Rosenbaum Collection, this exhibition presents 63 original prints and limited-edition ceramics that reveal how the artist transformed a traditional medium into a site of bold experimentation and creative reinvention.
Through vessels, plates, pitchers, and sculptural forms, Picasso explored many of the ideas that shaped his broader artistic practice. His ceramics blur the boundaries between reality and representation, shift between two- and three-dimensional space, and present multiple viewpoints simultaneously. The exhibition traces recurring themes of transformation, variation, and metamorphosis while highlighting Picasso’s inventive use of form, color, and volume. At the same time, the works demonstrate his deep engagement with Mediterranean ceramic traditions, reimagined through a modern artistic lens.
Supplemented by archival photographs, multimedia, and interactive elements, the exhibition offers insight into Picasso’s creative process and his collaboration with the Madoura pottery in Vallauris, France. Together, these resources illuminate how ceramics became a vehicle for Picasso to make avant-garde ideas more accessible to a wider public.
The works in the exhibition are drawn from the Rosenbaum collection of Boca Raton, Florida. Marvin Rosenbaum collected Picasso ceramics for over 50 years and became a well-respected expert in the field. From the 1960s through the 1980s he spent summers in the French Riviera visiting artists in museums and galleries. On one such trip, he had the opportunity to visit the Vallauris pottery where Picasso had created his ceramic works and to meet George Remy, the owner. He instantly fell in love with Picasso’s ceramics. This started a lifelong passion to learn about and collect these wonderful artworks. The Rosenbaum Collection now includes over 600 works.
Picasso Ceramics from the Rosenbaum Collection is organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA, with contributions from Bowers Museum and guest curator Dr. Salvador Haro González.
