Pablo Picasso’s 100 delightful etchings that make up the Suite Vollard come to Delhi

Pablo Picasso can do many things to you. The gaping horror in Guernica can stun you to silence; the whimsical drama in Dora Maar with Cat can amuse you. But not all the monumental works of Picasso would prepare you for the delightful drawings, the fluid lines that make up the Suite Vollard. The suite of 100 etchings is named after the legendary French art dealer Ambroise Vollard who introduced Paul Cezanne to a euphoric Paris. He supported Picasso in his early days and in 1930 commissioned the hundred plates. The suite will have its first India showing at the Instituto Cervantes when the Spanish centre is inaugurated by the Crown Prince of Spain Felipe and Princess Letizia on November 11.

The Suite Vollard, created between 1930 and ’37, reveals a grand preoccupation with classical themes. In a few of the etchings, Picasso metamorphoses into the half-man half-bull Minotaur possessing his muse and lover Marie-Therese. The Minotaur series is not just about love approaching brawny bestiality, but about artist as untamed beast. The other themes in the set, which is often cited as containing Picasso’s best prints, include “Rembrandt”, “The Sculptor’s Studio” and “Battle of Love”. There are three portraits of Vollard as well, the last works in the suite.

“I have been thinking of getting the works to India for more than two years,” says Oscar Pujol, director of the Instituto Cervantes, New Delhi, who is exhibiting the work in collaboration with the Spanish cultural institute Fundacion Mapfre. “I am conscious that Picasso is one of the few Spanish artists who is well-known in India but a lot of people do not know that he is Spanish, and we wanted to insist his Spanish origins.” Adds Nuria González Ortín, communications manager at the Instituto: “It is very rare that the complete set of 100 works is shown. This is a collection from the first edition dating back to the 1930s.”

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