Picasso Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection

Gallery 13, New Walk Museum & Art Gallery

Following the highly successful 2007 exhibition, New Walk Museum & Art Gallery is delighted to present Picasso: The Attenborough Collection, a permanent gallery of selected key works from the collection of Lord and Lady Attenborough.

In 1954 Richard and Sheila Attenborough paid their first visit to the Madoura pottery in Vallauris, where Picasso had been working for several years with Georges and Suzanne Ramié. The Attenboroughs started with modest purchases, leading to a collection numbering some 150 pieces.

All of Picasso’s activity with ceramics centred around the Madoura pottery factory in Vallauris, France. Picasso made plates, jugs and tiles but he also designed new forms combining aspects of painting and sculpture in ceramics. The majority of the collection consists of Editions and Original Impressions; multiple works that Picasso insisted the pottery should produce and sell inexpensively, so that everyone could own a ‘Picasso’.

This intimate permanent exhibition shows a changing display of around forty works selected from the unique collection, curated by renowned Picasso expert, Dr Marilyn McCully.

In 2007, Lord and Lady Attenborough announced that their Picasso ceramics collection would be entrusted to the City of Leicester to commemorate the lives of their daughter, Jane Mary, and their granddaughter, Lucy Elizabeth, who perished together in the Asian Tsunami on 26th December 2004.

BBC Leicester: In pictures: Picasso ceramics exhibition in Leicester

Picasso Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection Catalogue

The Picasso Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection catalogue is now available from New Walk Museum’s gift shop.

Picasso Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection by Marilyn McCully and Michael Raeburn, is a new 192 page, hardback book, containing more than 220 colour illustrations profiling Lord Attenborough’s significant collection of Picasso Ceramics. Find out more about the Picasso Ceramics catalogue...

Schools

A range of resources for art groups are available to accompany the exhibition. To find out more, contact the Arts & Museums Learning team on 0116 225 4910.