Fernande Olivier was the first real love in the life of Picasso, and the years she spent with the great artist, 1904 to 1912, coincide with some of his most revolutionary work. "Loving Picasso" brings Oliver's memoirs to life with archival photos, reproductions of her own artwork, and a selection of superb portraits of her by Picasso himself. 82 illustrations, 10 in full color.

The author sets out to capture Picasso's early life in this biography, exploring the originality of his art and ambition. At the heart of the interpretation is Picasso's first great love, Fernande Olivier, with whom the artist lived for seven years - a period which included his most revolutionary works. Fernande is given her own voice by way of excerpts from her candid memoirs. Including the artist's friendships with Apollonaire and Gertrude Stein, the book evokes the atmosphere of bohemian life in Paris in the early 1900s.

One of The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2018 “An engrossing read…a historically and psychologically rich account of the young Picasso and his coteries in Barcelona and Paris” (The Washington Post) and how he achieved his breakthrough and revolutionized modern art through his masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. In 1900, eighteen-year-old Pablo Picasso journeyed from Barcelona to Paris, the glittering capital of the art world. For the next several years he endured poverty and neglect before emerging as the leader of a bohemian band of painters, sculptors, and poets. Here he met his first true love and enjoyed his first taste of fame. Decades later Picasso would look back on these years as the happiest of his long life. Recognition came first from the avant-garde, then from daring collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein. In 1907, Picasso began the vast, disturbing masterpiece known as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Inspired by the painting of Paul Cézanne and the inventions of African and tribal sculpture, Picasso created a work that captured the disorienting experience of modernity itself. The painting proved so shocking that even his friends assumed he’d gone mad, but over the months and years it exerted an ever greater fascination on the most advanced painters and sculptors, ultimately laying the foundation for the most innovative century in the history of art. In Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World, Miles J. Unger “combines the personal story of Picasso’s early years in Paris—his friendships, his romances, his great ambition, his fears—with the larger story of modernism and the avant-garde” (The Christian Science Monitor). This is the story of an artistic genius with a singular creative gift. It is “riveting…This engrossing book chronicles with precision and enthusiasm a painting with lasting impact in today’s art world” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), all of it played out against the backdrop of the world’s most captivating city.

Between spring and winter 1909, Picasso executed more than sixty portraits of his companion, Fernande Olivier. These works--produced in a variety of formats and mediums--exhibit a range of artistic approaches dedicated to a single subject that stands out in the history of portraiture. Even more significant, this series of works coincided with the invention of Cubism. Published to accompany a major exhibition originating at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, this richly illustrated volume illuminates Picasso's radical reformulation of human physiognomy. Containing eighty-two color illustrations and sixty-eight duotones, the catalogue explores the Fernande portraits and related works as a single oeuvre culminating in the magnificent Head of a Woman (Fernande)--one of Picasso's rare pre-1912 excursions into sculpture. By so doing, it allows us to examine Picasso's process in an unprecedented fashion. What emerges is a new picture of the artist pursuing his subject with obsessive repetition and struggling to resolve artistic problems during a time of crisis in his work. Also included are previously unpublished studio photographs that offer further insight into the conceptual nature of the artist's process. The text narrates the internal development of the Fernande portrait series, situates it within the broader history of representation, and considers the powerful impact of Cézanne on Picasso's work during this period. Seizing a single extended moment in the early history of Cubism, this catalogue reveals Cubism's great achievement--its startling invention, its remarkable expressive power, and its profound formal and psychological implications for modern art. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE: National Gallery of Art, Washington October 1, 2003 - January 18, 2004 Nasher Sculpture Garden, Dallas February 15 - May 9, 2004

"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Picasso: the artist and his muses presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery, June 11 - October 2, 2016 ... created by Art Centre Basel, curated by Katharina Beisiegel, and produced in collaboration with the Vancouver Art Gallery"--Copyright page.