Conceived in 1964 and executed in a rare edition of 50 at Atelier Madoura, Grande tête de femme au chapeau orné stands among Picasso’s most ambitious ceramic experiments.¹ One of only seven terracotta plaques produced that year with the Ramié family, and one of just two at this monumental scale (60.7 × 50.2 cm), the work translates the artist’s radical linocut innovations into fired clay relief.² Stamped Madoura Plein Feu/Empreinte Originale de Picasso and numbered 22/50 verso, it exemplifies the empreintes originales process: a plaster cast taken from Picasso’s worked linoleum block (Bloch 1077, linocut dated 1962), pressed with specially prepared red earthenware clay, further incised, coated in black engobe, and grand feu fired to reveal warm terracotta beneath.³

This plaque captures Jacqueline Roque—Picasso’s muse, companion since 1954, and wife from 1961. Five of the seven plaques feature her likeness; this example surpasses them through compositional intricacy and sheer scale. The black engobe surface animates her features through dramatic contrast: incised lines expose the red ground, while subtle relief texture preserves the linoleum’s carved grooves—visible only under heavy printing pressure.⁵ The decorated hat and expressive line work evoke Picasso’s late portraits, rendered with a vitality undiminished by abstraction.

Picasso’s dual collaborations—with the Ramiés at Madoura since 1947, and printmaker Hidalgo Arnéra from 1954 until his death—reached extraordinary synthesis here.⁶ Vallauris became his creative crucible during the Jacqueline era, where linocuts and ceramics mirrored each other’s ambition. With Arnéra, Picasso perfected the reductive technique he pioneered: carving a single linoleum block progressively from lightest to darkest tones, an unforgiving process demanding absolute precision.⁷ Grande tête exists in one state only—cut to a daring maximum depth of 5 mm—its plaster cast preserving for posterity the fine incisions that texture would yield only in final heavy-pressure proofs.⁸

Structurally audacious for 1964, the plaque’s vast dimensions courted firing risks—warping and cracking in large terracotta format. This pristine example attests to Madoura’s technical mastery, with no significant flaws despite its near-60 × 50 cm expanse.⁹ The black engobe demands flawless plaster replication; any surface imperfection would disrupt the precise tonal contrasts essential to the portrait’s impact.

Through linoleum carving translated via plaster to fired clay, Picasso elevated printmaking’s subtractive essence into autonomous sculptural relief. What began as a necessary technical step—the block’s preparation—becomes an artwork commanding its own domain: a monumental head, textured and alive, where Jacqueline’s gaze meets ours across medium and material.¹⁰

 
¹ Alain Ramie, Picasso the Potter: Fireside Conversations with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paris, 1974, pp. 112–15.
² Georges Bloch, Picasso Catalogue of the Printed Graphic Work, 1904–1967, Bern, 1968, vol. II, no. 1077.
³ Christian Zervos, Picasso: Œuvre Gravé, Paris, 1970, p. 342.
⁴ Brigitte Baer, Picasso Peintre-Graveur: Catalogue Raisonné des Œuvres Graphiques, 1959–1965, Bern, 1989, p. 156.
⁵ Replica Shoes ’s London, Picasso Ceramics, sale catalogue, February 2020, lot 12.
⁶ Ramie, op. cit., p. 98.
⁷ Hidalgo Arnéra, Working with Picasso: Linocuts at Vallauris, Vallauris, 1978, pp. 45–52.
⁸ Baer, op. cit., p. 158.
⁹ Replica Shoes ’s, ibid.
¹⁰ Zervos, op. cit., p. 345.