Vollard Suite

As art world legend has it, Pablo Picasso’s most celebrated series of etchings, the “Vollard Suite,” began with a trade. In exchange for paintings by the Impressionist masters Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Picasso agreed to produce a series of 100 prints for his art dealer, Ambroise Vollard. Produced from 1930 to 1937, Picasso devoted this body of work to five main themes: The Battle of Love, The Sculptor’s Studio, Rembrandt, The Minotaur, and Portraits of Vollard. Though Vollard commissioned these prints, he died before the series was completed, which, along with World War II, delayed their release to the public until the 1950s.