By the beginning of the 1930s, the artist, printmaker and sculptor Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was already world-famous.
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As Pablo Picasso, he was 50 years of age and at the peak of his powers, having transformed his practice through a series of vastly differing styles - his 'Blue' and 'Rose' periods, into Primitivism and Cubism, to arrive at what was known as his Neoclassical and Surrealist period.
During this time the Spanish-born Picasso, now living in Paris, began to explore the symbol of the Minotaur, reflecting both an obsession with the image beloved by the Surrealists and simultaneously one that was deeply embedded in the culture and myth of his birth country, the bull.
And it must be said, reflected his own dominant, overpowering and conflicted vision of his personality and sexuality. The two cannot be separated. Picasso had no doubt: he was the world's greatest artist.
From February to April, the Art Gallery of Ballarat will be presenting The Vollard Suite, a collection of 100 intaglios by Picasso, one of only three venues around Australia to host this significant exhibition from the National Gallery of Australia (NGA).
Created between 1930 and 1937, at the point where Europe was still recovering from the effects of the First World War while plunging toward the Second, the 100 works were commissioned by Ambroise Vollard, Picasso’s early art dealer and publisher and a major supporter of not only Picasso, but also Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne, Gaugin and a host of other then-struggling artists, now well-known.
The NGA is one of the few cultural institutions in the world to hold the complete suite of 100, and AGB director Louise Tegart says it's a privilege for the gallery to showcase the rare set of works.
“The series of 100 etchings that make up Picasso’s Vollard Suite is at once among the artist’s best and least known works of art,” she said.
“Individual prints from the series are reproduced in almost every textbook of 20th Century art, but relatively few people have ever seen the set in its entirety.”
Sally Foster is the head curator of the NGA's international prints, drawings and illustrated books, and is responsible for the Vollard Suite show.
She says the suite should be considered a single work of art made up of 100 separate pieces.
"That really the most impressive way to think of it," Ms Foster says.
"It hasn't been on display for over 20 years. Picasso was an incredibly good printmaker; Vollard saw some of his works and commissioned him in 1933; said, 'OK, make me 100'.
"Picasso is at his peak. He's not just a hero of the avant-garde; he's world-famous. He's having big solo shows; the Catalogue Raisonne is published; it's apparent to him, and to everybody, that he's going to go down in history as one of the greats.
"It's an important period in his life and in history."
The Art Gallery of Ballarat will hold a discussion about the depiction of sexuality and especially that of sexual violence in the #MeToo era as part of the Vollard Suite exhibition.
A number of the works in the suite depict rape, with the figure of the Minotaur especially becoming more sexually violent as the series moves forward through the years. This perhaps represents Picasso's eveolving relationship with his model and muse of the period, Marie-Thérèse Walter.
For curator Sally Foster, the issues contemporary audiences struggle with in Picasso's work relate to his unrelenting honesty in the portrayal of his vision.
"There are images of rape, of the subjectification of women, there's no doubt," she says.
"But it's not literal. There's no suggestion Picasso was on the streets raping women. What he's saying is, no matter how sophisticated we think we've become, there's a latent, underlying violence that permeates everything.
"The man-beast, the Minotaur, that's his alter-ego. It doesn't matter what point you get to, whether it's the individual or society, bubbling underneath are uncontrollable impulses and what does that look like when it comes to the surface?"
The Art Gallery of Ballarat will hold a lecture on the problems of the depiction of violence against women on Tuesday March 26 at 6pm. Picasso: The Vollard Suite runs from February 23 to April 28, 2019.
