Picasso’s Vollard Suite and Spanish Engraving in the ICO Museum Collection

From 13 February to 20 July, the ICO Museum will host an exhibition that sets up a dialogue between the masterpiece of engraving, the Vollard Suite, and a selection of engravings and paintings by artists like Juan Genovés, Eduardo Arroyo, Manolo Valdés, Miguel Ángel Campano or Darío Villalba. This double exhibition covers 20th century Spanish engravings from the ICO Museum’s Collection.

Curated by the ICO Foundation’s Art Department and made up of works acquired by the Official Credit Institute (ICO) in the 1990s, this exhibition is related to the museum's objective to conserve and disseminate its collections. This exhibition is a unique opportunity to see one of the world’s few full sets of Picasso's Vollard Suite, which was last exhibited in its entirety at the ICO Museum in 2012.

The Vollard Suite, considered to be the most important series of contemporary engravings, is made up of one hundred works created between 1930 and 1937, at a time when the there was a  close collaboration between the dealer and gallery owner Ambroise Vollard and Pablo Picasso. This series is the result of a friendly and commercial relationship between them, since Vollard obtained the initial series of 97 copper engravings of the Suite in 1937 in exchange for a significant number of paintings owned by him and which Picasso wanted for his private collection.

This exhibition is divided into several themed blocks that analyse the evolution of Picasso’s creative and personal obsessions:  The Sculptor's Studio, The Battle of Love, The Minotaur or Portraits of Ambroise Vollard. The engravings offer a journey through the different techniques used by the artist from Malaga in this discipline, such as etching, aquatint, burin or drypoint.

Image Credits:

• Pablo Picasso, Sculptor, Model and Sculpted Head, Paris, 23 March 1933. © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2025
• La grappa VIII, 1986. © Miguel Ángel Campano, VEGAP, Madrid, 2025
• Pablo Picasso, Winged Bull Watched by Four Children, December 1934. © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2025
• 3 October 1990, 1990. © Eduardo Arroyo, VEGAP, Madrid, 2025