Pablo Picasso was one of the most innovative, experimental, prolific,influential, and controversial painters of the twentieth century. Anupdated and re-designed version of the large-format book published inthe year 2000, this small-format Picasso. The Monograph 1881-1973offers more than 1,200 new-scanned reproductions spanning the artist’s entire career. The three authors are all experts: L‚al and Bernadac--both former curators of the Mus‚e Picasso in Paris-- are, at thistime and respectively, curators of the Centre Pompidou and the LouvreMuseum, and Piot coauthored the catalogue raisonn‚ of Picasso’ssculpture.Brigitte Leal covers Picasso's formative years from 1881 through 1916, including his invention of Cubism with Georges Braque. Christine Piot explores the astonishingly fertile period from 1917 through 1952, and Marie- Laure Bernadac discusses the unabashed vigor of Picasso’slater years, from 1953 until his death in 1973. Smoothly translatedfrom the French, the book weaves biographical details anddiscussionsof the art into a concise narrative. ("Olga became pregnant in thesummer of 1920, and in Picasso’s work forms blossomed and flesh tookon the massive quality of stone.").The authors keep an extremely tight focus on their subject, with only as much mention of Picasso’scontemporaries or the outside world as absolutely necessary. The16-page section on Guernica, for example, has barely two pages ofdiscussion about the painting and its genesis.In short, for any personal or academic art history collection, and for students or community libraries, Picasso. The Monograph 1881-1973 isunsurpassed.
