Customer Reviews (1)

Quality at a reasonable price
A very reasonable price for such an attractive Engagement Calendar with quality paper and a protective outer covering. ... Read more

Product Description
Essays by Kornelia von Berswordt-Walrabe, Sabine Fett, Gerhard Graulich, Karin Mller, and Kornelia Rder.

In the course of an extraordinary career driven by his virtually inexhaustible vitality and his ceaseless quest for renewal in his own work, Pablo Picasso brought forth an unusually extensive body of art. This book is not conceived as a survey of that oeuvre, but focuses instead upon Picasso, the innovator and the conceptualist. In each of the works selected, which together represent all of the artist's creative phases, from Cubism to abstraction to his late work in sculpture, the "appeal of surface" occupies the center of attention. The paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics included bear witness to Picasso's intense concern with materials and their formal translation into surface area, color, and line. These works tell us a great deal about the fundamental principles of his working approach, the structure of his visual imagery, and the conceptual impulses that underlie his art. This handsomely designed catalogue includes five essays examining his work in various mediums and genres, a bio/bibliography, and a section of photographs by Edward Quinn, capturing Picasso at work and play. ... Read more

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For years Pablo Picasso's sculptural oeuvre was one of the best-kept secrets of 20th century art. It was only through retrospectives in Paris, London and New York during the 1960's that Picasso the sculptor became known to a larger public-who discovered a complexity and variety in his sculptures that easily rivals that of his paintings and drawings. Pablo Picasso: The Sculptures is catalogue raisonn of Picasso's sculptures, a seminal work informed by conversations between the author, Picasso specialist Werner Spies, and Picasso himself. The present edition has been thoroughly revised and now includes numerous color illustrations of important pieces. In all this volume features over 740 works by the artist, ranging from miniature paper figures to constructions from metal, wood, and found objects, from folding sculptures made from tin to massive, at times monumental works. A definitive statement on Picasso's sculptural oeuvre, this book provides a key to understanding and appreciating works that, in their ingenuity and their inventiveness, still provide an inexhaustible source of inspiration for today's artists. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fabulous Images!
Page after Page of beautifully photographed colour images.It's eye candy for the Picasso fan really. Can't get enough of his work.Many of these works are not shown in your average "Picasso and his work" type book. It's a thorough and grounded collection of his sculpture with many stories and anecdotes on the work.
Very interesting and wonderful for research or a collector. A very heavy and big book, not only looks good on the coffee table but is gorgeous to go through slowly, page after beautiful page!
A must for every contemporary sculptor or Picasso fan! ... Read more

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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 under-studied--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 the war-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. With contributions by: Brigitte Baer, Michle Cone, Michael FitzGerald, Lydia Csat Gasman, Robert Rosenblum, Gertje Utley. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Amazing Catalog of an Amazing Exhibit
I saw this exhibit when it came to San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor, and saw fit to buy the catalog two years later, it madde such an impact.

This is not a collection of Picasso's best or most famous work. Rather it collects unknown and semi-distinguished pieces all produced during the political upheaval of WWII. As such it tells the story of the occcupation of France through the perceptions of one artist who survived it, and transformed the experience for the world to see through his art.

While it gathers some curiosities, like developmental sketchs for the classic Guernica, the real star of this exhibit are lesser known classics like Night Fishing at Antibes.

Don't buy this for a general introduction to Picasso's art. Think of it as a kind of emotional history in pictures.

A brilliant chronicle of an astonishing exhibition!
"Picasso and the War Years" surveys his art during his years of isolation in Occupied Paris, as well as the three years leading up to the cataclysm.Although several exhibitions have been held on this samesubject in Europe, this is the first such survey of Picasso's wartimeproduction to take place in the United States.A series of outstandingessays by several prominent critics explore the complex political, social,and personal circumstances which inspired these still-challengingpaintings, and the initial reactions to them.A warning: this book is notfor everyone.If you are disturbed by violent and harsh art, forget it. These images still retain their power to shock, disorient, disgust andsadden, even if sixty years have gone by since their creation.Yet all thepictures possess a deep geometric structure, formal balance, and intenseaffect which engraves them on the viewer's mind.The sorrowful, neurotic,and unforgettable face of Dora Maar, Picasso's mistress and model duringthese tragic years, is transformed in these paintings into a symbol of aworld gone mad. This is definitely one of the most significant art booksproduced this year. ... Read more

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In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, and he remained a loyal member to the end of his long life. This book examines for the first time Picasso's puzzling political commitment to a repressive organization that maintained an authoritarian hold on its artistic community. Gertje R. Utley offers new insights into the impact communism had on the artist's life and on his artistic production. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Hostile account of great artist and communist
This beautifully-illustrated book studies Pablo Picasso's artistic and political work after he joined the French Communist Party in 1944. `An illustrious son of democratic Spain', he opposed Franco, aided the resistance in Paris and championed France's post-war cultural renaissance.

Utley details Picasso's creative efforts and depicts the care and constant reworking with which he conceived, executed and reproduced his designs in different media, whether murals, paintings, sculptures, posters, postcards, prints, brooches, key chains or pottery. She disposes of the well-travelled lie that Picasso admitted that his work was all a blague, a trick played on the public. In fact, as she shows, the alleged conversation was drawn from Il Libro Nero, a collection of fictitious interviews written by Giovanni Papini.

Utley shows how `a strategy elaborated at the highest levels of the American government' presented the art of the New York School as a living manifestation of democracy as opposed to communism. The US state promoted Abstract Expressionism, to make New York supersede Paris as the capital of Western art. It promoted the notion of the Nietzschean artist, the individualistic, introspective genius in his ivory tower, free from all social and political concerns, casting Picasso as the `anti-artist', compromised because committed.

Yet this is a deeply anti-communist account of a good communist. Utley sneers at what she calls the communists' `illusory goal of bridging the gap between art and the people', and at `the inadequacies of the artistic policies and aspirations of the French Communist party'. It is clearly beyond the comprehension of the author, an American academic based at New York University, that Picasso was a loyal and active Party member for the rest of his long life - which says more about the author's limits than the subject's!

Her stale caricature of `repressive Party' and `servile member' fails completely to explain how people of the calibre of Picasso and his friends Paul Robeson, Pablo Neruda, Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard could be Party members. Were they all dupes? Unlike, say, an American academic, who cannot imagine how anyone cannot trust the US state?

Picasso's Role in The Communist Betrayal of Liberalism
As a working politician over the past sixty years in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, I experienced first-hand the sinister and underhanded role of Communists as putative allies and ultimate enemies.From the American Student Union in the 30's ("The Yanks are not Coming!) to the subversion of the McGovern campaign in 1972, American Communists, as disciplined and treacherous as their counterparts in Russia, sought violent Revolution as their doctrinaire goal under cover of a liberal "alliance" both here and more importantly in the unstable Fourth Republic. Gertje Utley's book, "Picasso, The Communist Years" shows bit by closely honed and researched bit, how Picasso lent his name and prestige to this debilitating process in France.With neither the background nor the political intellect to comprehend the logical consequences of his support for a repressive and hypocritical dictatorship, Picasso became the willing dupe of his Communist masters draining support for liberal political leaders and causes in France and elsewhere during the critical years of Communist dominance over the peoples of Eastern Europe.Utley connects Picasso's art and personality during this period with political views which were naive and egotistical in their origin and mischievous in their application. It is difficult to think of a greater challenge to an art historian than to attempt to describe the aberrational behavior of a great artist and the tangential effect of that behavior on his or her art.Utley's book is a readable and fascinating description of the macabre process by which Picasso was drawn into a realpolitik which aimed to destroy the very basis of his own artistic liberty. ... Read more

Product Description
Pablo Picasso’s continued search for the essential features of perceived objects and his natural abidance to the general principles regulating artistic creation determined his intuitive analysis of the various stages of vision. His exploration of pictorial language is reflected in the well-established periods in the development of Cubism. Progressively, objects were analyzed first by their image (or retinal) and surface (or external) features as viewed from particular observer-oriented viewpoints during the Pre-Cubist and Cézannian Cubist stages; then by viewer-independent, structural features during Analytic Cubism; and finally by categorial features during Synthetic Cubism. This final re-evaluation allowed the artist to treat pictorial language as truly arbitrary, leading to metaphorical correlations between objects that went beyond what was actually depicted on the surface of the canvas. ... Read more

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Pablo Picasso
Français : Pablo Picasso, de son nom complet Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (25 Octobre 1881 - 8 Avril 1973, était un artiste (peintre, sculteur...) espagnol.

English: Pablo Picasso, formally Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (October 25, 1881 - April 8, 1973) a Spanish painter, was one of the recognized masters of 20th century art.

Español: Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (Málaga 25 de octubre de 1881 - Mouguins 8 de abril de 1973) pintor español, uno de los artistas más reconocidos del siglo XX

Português: Pablo Picasso, de nome completo Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (25 de Outubro de 1881 - 8 de Abril de 1973), um pintor Espanhol, foi um dos mais reconhecidos mestres da arte do Século XX."

Polski: Pablo Picasso, prawidłowo Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (25 pażdziernika, 1881 - 8 kwietnia, 1973). Malarz, jest najbardziej rozpoznawalnym twórcą sztuki XX wieku.

Русский: Пабло Пикасо - изв. художник.
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Customer Reviews (1)

Not in English
The description of this item says that this ebook is in English.
However, it is in German. ... Read more

Product Description
Picasso was one of the most prolific printmakers in history. Working at different times in a variety of techniques--lithography, linocut, etching, drypoint, monotype--he produced more than 2,500 plates, and many of those are known in up to thirty states. The problem is how to make sense of this bewildering superabundance of art works which flowed from his imagination more or less throughout his long career, but most particularly between 1900 and 1942. No one is better placed to do so than Brigitte Baer, who was engaged for a number of years on the inventory of the Picasso estate. She is also the author of the definitive seven-volume catalogue raisonne of Picasso's prints.In gathering for exhibition and publication this representative selection from the unique collection of the Picasso Museum in Paris, Baer kept in mind the basic questions of why Picasso was attracted to the art of printmaking; and what role prints played in his work, his life, and his fantasies. Based on impeccable scholarship and the invaluable experience gained from personally handling these works of art for so many years, Baer's exhibition and catalogue provide a fresh evaluation of Picasso's genius. ... Read more

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Thirty-five of Picasso's erotic drawings are exhibited in this collection that offers viewers the unique experience of watching over the artistÂ’s shoulder as he works. PicassoÂ’s brilliant draftsmanship is evident on every page, while his versatility is reflected in these pieces, which are in turn provocative and humorous, angry and tender. Designed to resemble an artistÂ’s sketchbook, this superb addition to the Erotic Sketchbook series features stunning reproductions, an embossed cover and a delicate ribbon tie, making it the perfect gift or keepsake for lovers of art and lovers everywhere. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

It's ok...
I purchased this book after seeing an erotic Picasso sketch in Barcelona.I couldn't get the sketch out of my head and was intrigued that a)Picasso had many such sketches and b)someone made a book out of them.My curiousity has been satisfied.There aren't enough sketches to develop an entire book.To make up for the lack of sketches, there are many blank pages in what seems to be awkward places (e.g. after a few sketches here and there, rather than after each sketch).Glad to have the book, but I should have bought the postcard in Spain.

Nice concept
Nice copy of rarely published Picasso sketches.However they are much smaller than the originals and the colors not very clear.

Good gift book
Beautifully printed and presented, a book that says "gift" for an art-loving friend who appreciates mainstream erotic art. ... Read more

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On his death Picasso left some 175 sketchbooks spanning over 60 years, their pages filled with drawings which were largely unknown even to close friends and scholars. This text presents a record of the day-to-day working life of the artist, and deals directly or indirectly with almost every phase of Picasso's career. Individual leaves as well as six sketchbooks are shown in full and in sequence, and six essays by art historians (Claude Picasso, E.A. Carmean, Robert Rosenblum, Theodore Reff, Rosalind E. Krauss, Sam Hunter, Gert Schiff and Francoise Gilot) each relate to a single sketchbook on the essayist's field of expertise. ... Read more

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The career of the greatest painter of the twentieth century was played out in the shadow of Eros -- and of Thanatos.At the age of eight, Picasso's first drawings already displayed a precocious interest in the female form, and in the days leading up to his death he was still working obsessively on sketches of the female sex. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Investigating Picasso's Obsessions with Erotica
The fine book from Prestel serves as a significant addition to the burgeoning library on Pablo Picasso, the most popular 20th Century artist in the world.While much of his output (and his output was gargantuan!) is secondary to his acknowledged masterpieces, when grouped as in the manner in which Jean Clair, Director of the Muse Picasso in Paris has done for the purposes of a traveling exhibition, the ingenuity as well as the personal psychosocial issues of the artist become far more focused.

That Picasso was a slave to Eros is well known: that he lived a second life in the bordellos of Barcelona is less well known until now!The book abounds in over 450 images in color and in black and white of his voyeuristic tendencies and his celebration of the female form.These sketches and finished works span his early periods, his cubism, and his later life return to representation.They are a joy to view and review in this beautifully presented book.

Accompanying the images are informative and enjoyably readable essays by Jean Clair himself, Annie Le Brun, Marie-Noelle Delorme, Pascal Quignard, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Patrick Roegiers, and Malen Gual.PICASSO EROTIQUE is one of those art books that actually merits careful reading s well as being entertained by the wonderful visuals.Highly recommended.Grady Harp, October 05

Picasso as life force
In their Preface to this remarkable book (published to accompany exhibitions in Paris, Montreal, and Barcelona) Guy Cogeval, Jean Clair, and Maria Teresa Ocana assert that all of the art of Pablo Picasso - whether visual or literary - was "guided by a specifically Spanish eroticism, a medley of sensuality and tenderness, of scatology and gluttony." Curator and editor Clair has assembled a group of erudite and sometimes thrilling essayists, and 350 or so plates of Picasso's most obviously erotic topics, whether sketches, paintings, sculpture - from his entire art-producing life (beginning at age 9!). Mythology, religion, linguistics, classical influences, and Picasso's upbringing and circumstances and adult life (among many other things)are all explored in the dozen essays that make this book such great reading.

Clair's own "The School of Darkness" is a heady and passionate appreciation of Picasso. He contributes right off to the decades-old debate regarding Picasso's view and treatment of women. He defends the artist and the man,rejecting portrayals of Picasso as " the ogre, the dark demon, the wife-eating Minotaur," quoting writer Micheline Sauvage's words on Don Juan: "Not the profaner of love, but the hero of profane love." Picasso possessed energy and drive that included prodigious eating, drinking, sexual expression, writing, the production of art, and more art.

Housekeeping out of the way, Clair'sessay grows into something remarkable: part biography, part chant. If you read it aloud you might well amaze and delight yourself and your listener.

Annie Le Brun's "Painting in the Bedroom" successfully places Picasso's erotic sensibilities and drivein context and in comparison to other painters, whom she asserts (and proves) shared traits with Picasso. 'Diamond Made of All the Love of the Loves of Blood,' (the title comes from a diary entry ofthe artist) by Marie-Noelle Delorme is a fabulous compilation, effectively and subtlely organized, that shows Picasso the energetic and larger-than-life diarist - a passionate and powerful writer on love, bodies, intimate landscapes, and much more.

The illustrations - a "Chronological Catalogue of Exhibited Works,"fill over 200 pages. The layout and the colors are good and the plates are big enough. There are oil paintings, etchings, drawings in pencil, colored pencil, chalk, ink, and charcoal;aquatint, drypoint, etchings; sculptures in wood, plaster, clay and bronze - and more. The earliest drawing is a copulation scene, "Donkey and She-Ass," done by a nine-year old Picasso - who as a schoolboy was already drawing confidently and well and, it can be argued, had already found his voice.

The works are of men, women, animals together, animals with people, blind men, lovers, voyeurs, brothel scenes, outsized genitalia,mythological beasts and people, nudes in classical poses, Cubist paintings on erotic themes, sketches of solicitude and tenderness and caring, playfully altered pin-ups from the 50's, visions of sexuality altered but undimmed by old age, and much more.

By virtue of its twelve strong, smart, passionate essays, and its 300 plates,thisbook becomes much more than the sum of its parts.Very worthwhile, and a great read. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Pictures tell much less than a thousand words...
The price is great on this book but don't expect anything more than the title says.There are 61 black and white pictures of picasso lithographs with VERY LITTLE information on each piece.I thought that this book wasgoing to concentrate on one specific run of lithographs but it is just ahodge podge or pics. ... Read more

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Based on a landmark exhibition put together in 1995 by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, this study showca ses the many landscapes that Picasso painted before the adve nt of cubism in 1912. ' ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

bizzare... beautiful...
For those of you who believe postcards are to be written on and mailed instead of tucked away in a drawer, this one's for you. Picasso did some really gorgeous and very strange stuff. Any one of your friends or family members would delight in getting one of these postcards in the mail.

Sending postcards can make for a wonderful hobby, and you might as well send something interesting so it will end up tacked to the fridge and not in the trash. Picasso's well-known works and some lesser-known pieces are included.

Artistic
I really love this item.It's full color postcards are very stunning.As a fan of Pablo Picasso, this Item is really a great thing to have either to admire or send to others. ... Read more