Incollect Magazine - Issue 13

44 www.incollect.com When the Master CERAMICS PICASSO’S Played with Form by Benjamin Genocchio “Picasso ceramics have been a part of my life and my family for as long as I can remember,” says Aaron Katz, owner of Jeans Gallery on the 10th floor of the New York Design Center in midtown Manhattan. His grandmother, Jean Katz, began collecting Picasso’s ceramics in the 1960s, and his parents went on to amass their own more substantial, world-class collection. Katz, 23, began building his own Picasso ceramics collection as a teenager. “I would buy at auction or on eBay, and as I gained more knowledge about their quality and how to authenticate them, I would sell or trade for better ones,” he says. “I found out I enjoyed the buying and selling part, hunting down rare examples, and sharing them with my family and others. I enjoy working with the material so much that I decided to open a gallery.” Katz opened Jeans Gallery in the The Gallery at 200 Lex in the New York Design Center in 2024. The gallery is named for his grandmother, who he says instilled in him the importance of Picasso’s ceramics. It was not until several international museum shows in the 1990s that Picasso’s ceramics came to be regarded as important artworks in their own right, worthy of display and collection alongside the artist’s other works. Picasso produced ceramics between 1947 and 1971 in the south of France, where he had lived after leaving Paris at the end of World War II. He created around 4,000 original designs for ceramics, most of which he painted himself at the Madoura Pottery studio in Vallauris, a famous French pottery town. Of these 4,000 original designs, 633 were eventually chosen by the Madoura Pottery Studio team and Picasso to be produced and sold as editions in various sizes. It is estimated that around 120,000 editioned pieces were made at the Madoura Pottery Studio and sold initially as inexpensive souvenirs of the artist’s work to tourists visiting the south of France. “He wasn’t throwing clay pots at the Madoura Studio in Vallauris," Katz explains. “He was there advising and designing the original form and appearance of the ceramics, and then the potters would throw a design in various quantities and paint them.” Chouette (A.R. 605), conceived in 1969 and executed in a numbered edition of 500 (12 in.) Photo: David Bear Paysage (A.R. 208), conceived in 1953 and executed in a numbered edition of 200 (16 in.) Photo: David Bear Pichet à glace (A.R. 142), conceived in 1952 and executed in a numbered edition of 100 (13 in.) Photo: Evan Miller