Late Criticism | The Vollard Suite by Gabriel Almeida

Editor Gabriel Almeida looks closely at Picasso’s Vollard Suite. 

“You see this truculent character here, with the curly hair and mustache?” Picasso asked Francoise Gilot, talking about the Vollard Suite, “That’s Rembrandt. Or maybe it’s Balzac; I’m not sure. It’s a compromise, I suppose. It doesn’t really matter. They’re only two of the people to haunt me. Every human being is a whole colony.” The retinue of characters and creatures of the Vollard Suite haunt the artist, they are the ghost of a tragedy that unfolds through pages of prints. They are the most intimate and personal aspects of Picasso's life — in particular, “the luminous dream of youth, always in the background but always within reach,” named Marie-Thérèse Walter — enacted by figures of myth and history. Every character of Picasso’s series airs an intermingling of personal and poetical elements, and expresses through fantasy, intense anger and strain, love and pleasure, aporia and self-absorption, an irresolute conflict that neither reality nor the imagination are capable of satisfying.

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