Suite Vollard by Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (Malaga, Spain, 1881- Mougins, France, 1973) was commissioned between September 13, 1930 and March 1937, by the art dealer and editor Ambroise Vollard, to create one hundred copper etchings which are now known as the Suite Vollard.
In the 1920s, Picasso delved deeply into the search for new experiences and evolved in his etching technique. But, why is a series of etchings by Picasso known under the name of an art dealer? And more importantly, who was Vollard?
Ambroise Vollard was one of those characters of Paris from the turn of the last century, enigmatic and even approaching mysticism. In 1901, he organised Picasso’s first exhibit, in which he shared space with the Basque painter Iturrino. Vollard was especially interested in the edition of books illustrated by artists, as in sculpture and ceramics, but always giving priority to his editorial side.
Years later, in his role as art dealer, Vollard commissioned Picasso to create a series of etchings  made up of 97 copper plates, and  then completed the three last, done in 1937, bringing the total to 100.
The complete series includes three portraits of Ambroise Vollard, five plates referred to as “The Battle of Love,” done in 1933, forty-six plates on the  “The Sculptor’s Studio,” four plates on “Rembrandt,” fifteen plates on “The Minotaur” and twenty-six various compositions. The etchings have no sequence, rather their a temporal chronology obeys the external events in the artist’s life.
The most representative of the series is undoubtedly “The Sculptor’s Studio,” inspired by the mythic history of Pygmalion, who was in love with his work, a statue of Venus, that comes to life thanks to the intervention of the goddess. For Picasso, this story encompasses the emotion of the artist, the mysteries of creation and contemplation that, for him, come together in the same passionate flow. Picasso himself said of Zervos: “A work lives its life like any other living being, experiencing the changes that daily life imposes. It is natural, because a work does not live except thanks to those who contemplate it.”
Many of the prints referred to as “The Sculptor’s Studio” cover the sensual classicism of the sculptures that Picasso created in Boisgeloup, after meeting  Marie‑Thérèse Walter, who appears in several of these pieces.
Compared to the almost idyllic purity of these prints, disorder and chaos preside over the scenes referred to as the rapes. In these prints, the Minotaur, disillusioned and hungry for human flesh, foreshadows many of Picasso’s concerns that are later crystallized in Guernica, while again showing Picasso’s strong ties to Mediterranean culture.
The Suite Vollard clearly joins in the Picasso-type dialectic, fluctuating between order and violence, classicism and disfiguration, serenity and chaos… All of Pablo Picasso’s greatness seems to be concentrated in these one hundred prints. The spontaneous logic of his creation, as well as the quality of the works and the variety of the techniques employed, make the Suite Vollard one of the most important artistic testimonies of the last century and of history in general. For this occasion, thanks to the generous collaboration of the Fundación Mapfre, we can enjoy the wonderful and complete Suite Vollard for the first time in India.