Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, this is the first publication in English dealing exclusively with Picasso's unique works in ceramic.

Catalog of an exhibition held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, September 14, 2015-February 7, 2016.

This publication explores Picasso’s portrayals of life with Gilot and their young family in the decade they spent together. Françoise Gilot was a young budding painter when she met Picasso by chance at a café in 1943. The subsequent ten years spent together was a time of transformation in Picasso’s paintings that coincided with revolutionary inventions in lithography, sculpture, and ceramics. Picasso: L’Epoque Françoise presents for the first time several of Gilot’s paintings and drawings from the period alongside Picasso’s when the young painter was maturing while the elder continued to change the face of modern art. The fully illustrated catalogue includes a historic dialogue between Richardson and Gilot celebrating Picasso’s innovation in every medium during the postwar years of renewal.

Picasso's interest in ceramics arose briefly at the turn of the century and later, between 1945 and 1973, ran parallel to, sculpture, and engraving. In his sixties, Picasso tackled ceramics again, attracted by the material's potential, by the way its plastic properties allowed him to adapt it to his imagination. A number of skilled ceramists lived near his home in Vallauris, including the Ramie family, whose Madoura workshop produced the vast majority of the Spanish artist's work. This volume presents 61 ceramic pieces by Picasso that range from unfired clay to ceramics fired at high temperature and porcelain decorated with paint and enamel. All of the works are illustrated in color, including plates, dishes, vases, bottles, and zoomorphic jugs; wall, floor, roof tiles, and fragments of brick handled and metamorphosed by the artist's hand. Also included are pieces that are sculptures in their own right. Some items are enameled or painted, others incised or engraved, while the function of still others was transformed through the magical power of the artist. Picasso succeeded in giving Mediterranean ceramics new impetus, in tune bot his genius and 20th century art.