This “engraved bottle” has a three-dimensional design, wrapping around the girth of the vessel. The refined palette has been extended to its fullest possibilities, employing both gloss and matte glazes to create differing depths of black, and with a rustic method of engraving to the surface to achieve the playful sense of line, thereby animating the smiling faces therein.
As David Sylvester wrote in his 1960 article, published on the occasion of Picasso’s great retrospective at the Tate Gallery: “The need to isolate often governs Picasso’s use of colour… the absence of variety in the colour helps to isolate qualities of form. Thus, black-and-white tends to be used in ambitious and complex compositions like Atelier de la modiste, Guernica, The Charnel House, and the first Meninas.”