The Jean and Huguette Ramié collection bears witness to a pivotal period in Pablo Picasso's career, when he moved to Vallauris in 1948 and launched himself into the art of ceramics. The cubist painter had discovered the discipline two years earlier, during the annual exhibition of potters, where he met Georges and Suzanne Ramié, a ceramicist couple. They welcomed Picasso into their workshop called 'Madoura' to carry out his first ceramic experiments. A wave of more than 4,000 works followed.
Settling into Vallauris in 1948 and under the influence of Michel Sima (also a resident), Picasso chose the Madoura workshop to diversify his practice, combining painting, sculpture and engraving with ceramics. Far from considering this new discipline as a minor art, he devoted to it the same creative process as did for his paintings. He decorated plate after plate with themes that were dear to him (fauns, birds, bullfighters, portraits of his muses, etc.) An impressive body of objects and sculptural works resulted from this prolific period, which lasted until 1955.
Picasso carefully chose, with the help of the Ramié couple, the 633 models and the number of prints to be reproduced, entrusting the exclusive distribution of the works to Atelier Madoura, of which he was the official artist beginning in 1967.
Georges and Suzanne Ramié were assisted by Jean, their eldest son, who had familiarised himself with the various activities of the workshop during his high school years. Benefiting from a technical apprenticeship on the job, Jean joined the Madoura team in 1951. Huguette Douly, Jean's future wife, had been living with the Ramiés for several years and worked regularly with the workshop teams, learning enamelling, the installation of the handles and the stamping.
Having fallen in love, Jean and Huguette formalised their union on 27 February 1951, with Picasso and his companion at the time, Françoise Gilot, as a witness. The young couple were very involved in Picasso's tenure in Vallauris, and there is no lack of evidence of the bond between Jean and the artist. Picasso even once appeared one day at the couple's house, announcing to them: "I have decided to repaint your kitchen." In 1967, he also offered them a panel comprising seventy ceramic tiles entitled Circus Games. Huguette's close friend, Jaqueline Roque, became Picasso's last wife in 1961.
The four children of Jean and Huguette are now auctioning the collection of their parents, who died in 1997 and 2020. On March 17, Tajan will offer around sixty lots in which the works of Marc Chagall, Victor Brauner and Alberto Magnelli join a collection of works by the Cubist master.
Among Picasso's flagship lots, we find Tête de mousquetaire, an oil on canvas from 1967 painted in a delicate palette of greys, ivories and whites that we rarely see used by the artist. The musketeer motif appeared in Picasso's work in 1966, while he was convalescing in Mougins, ousting the harlequins and acrobats of past years.
Other highlights include a pencil sketch on a notebook sheet entitled Le Peintre et son modèle ('The Painter and his Model'), which depicts the artistic process (as Picasso once said, "no painter without model”), and Tête de jeune homme barbu ('Head of a Bearded Young Man'), an ink from 1967 dedicated 'For Jean Ramié'.
The ceramic selection will be led by a unique Colombe dish from 1949, cups and tiles dedicated to Jean Ramié and beautiful editions decorated with themes dear to the artist (Hibou ('Owl') vase, Centaure ('Centaur') pitcher, Chouette ('Small owl') pitcher).
The dreamlike artist Marc Chagall stands out with a work on plaster from 1962. Victor Brauner appears twice in the sale, while the abstract painter Alberto Magnelli will be represented with a gouache on slate from 1940, when his abstraction becomes more rigorous, rhythmic and colourful.
The Jean and Huguette Ramié collection embodies a page in the history of Vallauris and, above all, a friendship that forever transformed the fates of the Ramié family and arguably the greatest master of modern art. Taking place at Tajan, 17 March 2021.
For all the information relating to the sanitary measures in force, we invite you to visit the website of the auction house.
![Ubaldo Oppi (1889-1942), 'La jeune fille sentimentale' [detail], 1920-1922, oil on Masonite. Image © Cambi Casa d'Aste](https://images.prismic.io/barnebys/79c6d737-bd25-4eca-9439-fea081cf0275_Cover.jpg?auto=format,compress)