Description: Arguably the most important artist of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso has been the object of innumerable exhibitions and publications. This absorbing book draws upon new research and works that, in some cases, were held out of public view in Picasso's own collection to explore the critically important -- but still understudied -- period of his life from the time of the Spanish Civil War through World War II and the Nazi occupation of France. This span of years is marked by some of the most intensely personal and expressive work of his long and diverse career.

By the 1930s Picasso stood secure in his preeminence, a symbol of modernism and a model of inventiveness and self-renewal. The darkening political situation in Europe, however, began to intrude into his world of creativity, and by 1935 new themes of unrest were emerging in his work. With the outbreak of the civil war in Spain, political crisis became personal crisis, and the formerly autobiographical, even hermetic outlook in Picasso's art expanded to embrace a new political and social consciousness. During this period of his life, the subjects he painted changed dramatically in direct response first to the horrors of war and then to the dangers and privations of life in occupied Paris, where he chose to remain until the Liberation.

While it is true, as Picasso himself stated, that he did not directly paint the events of war, except perhaps in the powerful mural Guernica, their presence is felt as a steady and oppressive theme through the use of personalized signs and symbols and a distinctive stylistic language. It is a dark and moving pictorial record that finds parallels in depth of feeling and visual impact only in thewar-related imagery of Picasso's great Spanish forerunner Francisco de Goya. Through his own inward voyage, Picasso created a portrait of an era, witnessed firsthand from the position of a foreign "degenerate" artist living under Nazi surveillance.

The book traces Picasso's responses to the cataclysm of war as manifested in a lengthy series of figure paintings, still lifes, portraits, and cityscapes, amplified by photographs, letters, manuscripts, and illustrated books by the artist, drawn from collections all around the world. At a time when many artists internationally are looking for languages to express social and political criticism, it is more instructive than ever to consider the give-and-take between art and history in Picasso's work.

Please Wait