Sculptor and Model Viewing a Statue, Pablo Picasso

Archive Label 2003:
The Vollard Suite is a portfolio of 100 prints put together to satisfy a contract with the publisher, Ambroise Vollard, after Picasso had already created them between the years 1930 and 1936. The only recognizable theme to the collection is that of exploring the question of what it means to be an artist. That question was a crucial one for many artists in the 1930s, as fascism was outlawing and destroying so much progressive artwork and banning artists from producing further images.

Picasso spent World War II in Paris, but he reacted strongly to the war-time atrocities happening in his native land of Spain. The bombing massacre of the small Spanish Basque town of Guernica in 1937 spurred the artist to create a huge mural of the intense pain and suffering arbitrarily visited upon an innocent population. Picasso chose to remain in Paris through the worst times of deprivation and during the German occupation of the city, beginning in 1940. He was closely watched by the invading army, but managed to continue painting in his own studio.