By the time Picasso began working seriously with ceramics in his sixties, he had already secured his place in art history: Cubism, Guernica, shifting stylistic phases, major museum retrospectives. He could have spent the rest of his life simply being Picasso. Instead, he crossed the courtyard of the Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris, in the south of France, and started anew. He learned from local artisans, experimented daily, and treated clay with the same curiosity he once brought to painting and printmaking. “When I don’t have red, I use blue,” he once said, a line that captures his refusal to limit himself or his work.
In this chapter of his life, Picasso seemed to have returned to play and discovery. Plates, jugs, bowls, faces scratched into terracotta, animals painted onto everyday objects. The most famous artist in the world choosing one of the most humble mediums, and approaching it with the humility it takes to become a student again. Clay cracks, warps, refuses to cooperate, and is full of surprises. After decades of working at the height of control, ceramics offered Picasso a different rhythm.
This winter in Palm Beach, visitors can experience this lesser-known side of Picasso firsthand in the new exhibition Picasso: Clay, Line, and Legacy, presented by Kahan Gallery in collaboration with the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens. Bringing more than sixty of these ceramic works to West Palm Beach through March 15, 2026, the exhibition pairs Picasso’s pottery with selected prints, drawings, and tapestries from earlier in his career, revealing the through-line of invention that animated his work between 1946 and his death in 1973.
In that sense, the venue feels especially fitting. Ann Norton, like Picasso, devoted her later years to working directly with physical materials, carving monumental forms from stone and placing them in dialogue with the living world. Both artists rejected the idea of artistic retirement and remained committed to their practice until the end. Clay in Picasso’s hands, stone in Norton’s, but the same impulse underneath: to keep experimenting, to keep shaping the world, long after they had earned the right to stop.
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh. Courtesy Kahan Gallery, Palm Beach
On view at the two-acre gardens of the museum on 253 Barcelona Road in West Palm Beach, the exhibition invites visitors to consider not only the works themselves, but the conditions in which they were made. The airy courtyards and verdant palms echo the southern light of Vallauris; the intimacy of the gardens recalls the quiet afternoons Picasso spent at his wheel.
The exhibition is a compelling historical survey of a lesser known and significant body of work and shares with visitors a powerful message about time. Picasso turned to ceramics deep into his career, after many people would have settled into repetition or comfort. There is something radical in that choice. The idea that experimentation does not belong to youth, that curiosity has no expiration date, and that beginning again can and should still feel possible, even late in life.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Vase Aztèque aux quatre visages, 1957, Courtesy Kahan Gallery, Palm Beach
