The fact that Picasso liked to surround himself with animals is well known. One day in 1946, as Picasso was working at the Musée d'Antibes, his photographer friend Michel Sima, brought Picasso an injured owl he had found in the corner of the museum. This tiny bird will featrure heavily in both the paintings and the ceramics of the following years.
At the Madoura workshop in Vallauris, where Picasso first becomes initiated with ceramic-making in 1946, Picasso creates zoomorphic objects and sculptures.
Amongst those, the owl is a subject of predilection. "Pablo loved to surround himself with birds and animals. In general they were exempt from the suspicion with which he regarded his other friends. While Pablo was still working at the Musée d’Antibes, [Michel] Sima had come to us one day with a little owl he had found in a corner of the museum." says Françoise Gilot in Life with Picasso.