41 paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and documents, relating to Picasso's Family of Saltimbanques in the Chester Dale collection and to the theme of vagabond performers, marked the centennial of Pablo Picasso's birth.

Focusing on prints (etchings, drypoints, color lithographs), Picasso and the Circus presents a pivotal moment in Picasso's early career, between his Blue and Rose Periods, when he was increasingly drawn to the subject of the circus in Paris. The book analyzes the circus and related spectacles in fin-de-siecle Paris, and how they were interpreted by print arts of the era, including Jules Cheret, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Henri Gray, Edgar Chahine, and Richard Ranft. It then considers Pablo Picasso's Suite de Saltimbanques (1904-6), an early and highly important series of etchings and drypoints related primarily to acrobats (saltimbanques). The popularity of the circus in late 19th-and early 20th-century Paris certainly resonates in the works of many artists. From sensational--and sensationalized--feats of strength and prowess to moving depictions of poverty and the life of the outcast, these prints not only expand our understanding of the period, they also represent some of Picasso's finest work.

Anlässlich des großen Picasso-Jubiläumsjahres rund um den 50. Todestag des Künstlers, wird der spektakuläre Band zu den frühen Gemälden und Skulpturen Pablo Picassos neu aufgelegt. Die Bilder aus der sogenannten Blauen und Rosa Periode bis hin zum frühen Kubismus, die zwischen 1901 und 1907 entstanden, sind allesamt Meilensteine auf Picassos Weg zum berühmtesten Künstler des 20. Jahrhunderts. 2019 zeigte die Fondation Beyeler in ihrer bis dato hochkarätigsten Ausstellung rund 80 Meisterwerke aus renommierten Museen und Privatsammlungen. Sie zählen nicht nur zu den kostbarsten Kunstwerken überhaupt, sondern auch zu den schönsten und emotionalsten der Moderne. Der Band macht damit das Frühwerk des Ausnahmekünstlers auf einmalige Art und Weise erlebbar.

A groundbreaking reassessment of Picasso by one of today's preeminent art historians Picasso and Truth offers a breathtaking and original new look at the most significant artist of the modern era. From Pablo Picasso's early The Blue Room to the later Guernica, eminent art historian T. J. Clark offers a striking reassessment of the artist's paintings from the 1920s and 1930s. Why was the space of a room so basic to Picasso's worldview? And what happened to his art when he began to feel that room-space become too confined—too little exposed to the catastrophes of the twentieth century? Clark explores the role of space and the interior, and the battle between intimacy and monstrosity, in Picasso's art. Based on the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts delivered at the National Gallery of Art, this volume remedies the biographical and idolatrous tendencies of most studies on Picasso, reasserting the structure and substance of the artist's work. With compelling insight, Clark focuses on three central works—the large-scale Guitar and Mandolin on a Table (1924), The Three Dancers (1925), and The Painter and His Model (1927)—and explores Picasso's answer to Nietzsche's belief that the age-old commitment to truth was imploding in modern European culture. Masterful in its historical contextualization, Picasso and Truth rescues Picasso from the celebrity culture that trivializes his accomplishments and returns us to the tragic vision of his art—humane and appalling, naïve and difficult, in mourning for a lost nineteenth century, yet utterly exposed to the hell of Europe between the wars. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.

A rare look at the exceptional works on paper from private collections by the master of modern art. “There’s nothing more difficult than a line.” –Pablo Picasso Picasso: Seven Decades of Drawing surveys Pablo Picasso’s prodigious career as a draftsman, including over 40 examples on loan from private collections spanning nearly 70 years of the artist’s long and celebrated career. The book showcases drawings in a wide range of media, from works in charcoal and crayon to colored pencil, collage or papiers collés, graphite, gouache, ink, pastel, and watercolor. Some of the drawings on loan are rarely on view and they provide insight into the evolution of his iconic paintings, such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Guernica, while others stand alone as virtuoso, independent works, highlighting Picasso’s mastery of line, form, and medium. The book ultimately examines how drawing serves as the vital thread connecting all of Picasso’s art.

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.