Picasso Books
Last updated: November 05, 2022
The ultimate collection of books on Pablo Picasso. Picasso was, arguably, the most emblematic artist of the twentieth century. He was the first living artist to have his work shown in the Louvre. And he had enormous influence on 20th century art, working in an unprecedented variety of styles as a painter, sculptor, printmaker and lithographer, ceramist and designer. Born in Malaga, Spain, the son of an art teacher, he began his art studies when the family moved to Barcelona, where he studied first at the School of Fine Arts, then at the Madrid Academy from 1897. Precociously talented, he first visited Paris at the turn of the last century, and held his first one-man exhibition there in 1901. 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’ from 1906-7 was perhaps his pivotal painting, marking a revolutionary turn influenced by African tribal art, and which paved the way for the creation of Cubism, a collaboration with fellow artist George Braque. The rest, as they say, is history. His painting 'Guernica’ from 1937 is another landmark work, inspired by the destruction of the Spanish town by that name during the civil war. It stands to this day as one of the most forceful pictoral testimonies of that violent century.
Life with Picasso
by Carlton Lake & Françoise Gilot
Picasso encourages us to consider seeing his art as a mirror of his incredibly prolific life. The Musée National Picasso in Paris alone contains 300 paintings and 300 sculptures out from a total of 5000 works donated to the French State. He produced close to 50,000 works throughout his life. In the Musée Picasso works are dated by the season or even by month, almost as though Picasso were creating a diary though his work. Contemporaries, patrons, peers and muses appear to us almost like biographical entries. And these personalities commend themselves to anyone seeking to understand his life. One particularly notable memoir is Francoise Gilot’s. It was a scandal and a sensation when first published in 1964 – Picasso and friends sued to prevent its publication. Of all Picasso’s wives and lovers, Gilot was the only one who left him. Her’s was a life lived on her own terms, and her book is a counterpoint to the machismo that pervades so much of Picasso’s life and work. ’There are only two types of women: goddesses and doormats’, he has said. This goddess got away.
Pablo
by Clement Oubrerie & Julie Birmant
Picasso’s Head of a Woman at Tate Modern, a raw portrait of his lover Fernande Olivier, seems infused with their passionate relationship. Here was another goddess and early inspiration. For the graphically inclined, Pablo – from SelfMadeHero’s brilliant Art Masters series – is a mammoth graphic novel which beautifully recounts Picasso’s early years as told by Olivier, who as a model shared his Montmartre garret in the years before Cubism.
A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 (Vol 3)
by John Richardson
From his earliest creative years, Picasso’s circle reads like a pantheon of 20th century artistic greats. Anecdotes from his life could fill entire book tomes, and indeed, John Richardson’s magisterial biography runs to four volumes, and ends with World War II (Picasso died in 1973.) “As I get older and older, I get more and more astonished the deeper I get into his work,” Richardson said of his friend in 2012. His is the definitive biography, and although volume four is still pending publication, the place to start if you have the time and the inclination.
Gertrude Stein on Picasso
by Gertrude Stein
Aside from artists, Picasso rubbed shoulders with many other 20th century luminaries, who were drawn into his entourage by his charisma and wit. One of his greatest admirers was the American Gertrude Stein, who was a collector of his work from the early days of his career. Picasso’s portrait of her from 1905 demanded no fewer than 90 sittings (though one imagines they enjoyed shooting the breeze). When he gave it to Stein as a gift, she told him that it didn’t look like her. “It will”, he said. Stein’s account of Picasso provides a very good foil to this larger-than-life personality.
The Success and Failure of Picasso
by John Berger
“Picasso’s such a varied and impossible to pin down character. What can be produced in the process of trying to get there is the interesting thing.”
“We knew very little about these photographs – the circumstances, how many there were, who took them, you name it – until Billy Klüver set for himself this project of trying to figure it all out. He did a forensic investigation of the photographs and discovered that they were taken by Jean Cocteau of his friends Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani et cetera. It’s a true detective story about photography.” Read more...
The best books on Photography and Reality
Errol Morris, Film Director
“Somebody complained that Picasso’s picture of Gertrude Stein did not look like her and Goodman’s response was, ‘It will.'” Read more...
The best books on The Philosophy of Art
Noël Carroll, Philosopher
