Picasso Ceramics catalogue now available

A new catalogue Picasso Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection is now available from New Walk Museum's gift shop.

Picasso Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection by Marilyn McCully and Michael Raeburn, is a new 192 page, hardback book, containing more than 220 colour illustrations profiling Lord Attenborough's significant collection of Picasso Ceramics.

The Picasso Ceramics collection created by Lord Richard and Lady Sheila Attenborough numbers over 140 pieces. A permanent exhibition of 40 works from the collection is now on display at New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, following a successful temporary exhibition in 2007.

The catalogue profiles and illustrates each work in the collection, with technical data and details of their acquisition. It also includes an introductory essay on Picasso's Ceramics. The catalogue is the first full study of this important group of Picasso works.

Millie Smith, the President of the Friends of Leicester and Leicestershire Museums, who supported the catalogue said; "The Friends were delighted to support the forthcoming publication of Picasso
Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection. We do a wide range of fundraising and other work to support the museums in the city and county and are pleased to be involved with helping museum visitors learn more about this wonderful collection."

Marilyn McCully, author and curator of the exhibition at New Walk Museum & Art Gallery said: "Ceramics was the medium in which Picasso showed his powers of artistic transformation in the most inventive way. Working on the Mediterranean coast in the last 20 years of his life, he drew his inspiration from mythology, popular traditions and his own creativity which had revolutionized modern art."

In 2007, Lord and Lady Attenborough announced that their Picasso Ceramics collection would be entrusted to the City of Leicester to commemorate the lives of their daughter, Jane Mary, and their granddaughter, Lucy Elizabeth, who perished together in the Asian Tsunami on 26th December 2004.

Picasso Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection catalogue was supported by The Friends of Leicester and Leicestershire Museums and individual subscribers who are named in the publication.

Picasso Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection by Marilyn McCully and Michael Raeburn. Format 285x235mm, 192 pages, more than 220 colour illustrations, case bound with jacket, is now available priced £25.00. To purchase a copy, please visit the gift shop or call 0116 225 4900.

To find out more about the Picasso Ceramics: The Attenborough Collection gallery at New Walk Museum & Art Gallery visit: www.leicester.gov.uk/picasso