Focus on Vollard Suite and discuss the History.
In 1930 Picasso was commissioned to produce the etchings by the art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard in exchange for paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne.Picasso worked extensively on the set in the spring of 1933, and completed the suite in 1937. It took a further two years for the printmaker Roger Lacourière to finish printing the 230 full sets, but the death of Vollard in 1939 and the Second World War meant that the sets only started coming onto the art market in the 1950s.A 1971 exhibition of the suite in Madrid was attacked by a paramilitary group, the Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey (Warriors of Christ the King) who tore the pictures and poured acid over the prints. The group attacked things associated with Spanish exiles like Picasso who aligned themselves with the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.A spinning residential building in Brazil was named Suite Vollard after the suite.A complete set is owned by the National Gallery of Australia and a complete set was acquired by the British Museum in 2011 after a donation of £1 million from financier Hamish Parker, a director of Mondrian Investment Partners. The donation was in memory of Parker's father, Major Horace Parker. It had been the British Museum's ambition to own the set and the acquisition was described by the museum's director, Neil MacGregor, as "one of the institution's most important acquisitions of the past 50 years".
Republican cause Neil MacGregor National Gallery of Australia Suite Vollard Spanish Civil War Pierre-Auguste Renoir paramilitary spinning residential building Warriors of Christ the King etching British Museum Ambroise Vollard Roger Lacourière Paul Cézanne