Picasso: Painting Against Time - Hardcover

Clair, Jean; Schroder, Klaus Albrecht; Spies, Werner; Zweite, Armin

9783775719223: Picasso: Painting Against Time

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3775719229 ISBN 13: 9783775719223

Publisher: Hatje Cantz, 2007

No other painter has had a more lasting influence on twentieth-century art than Pablo Picasso. Among the many phases and styles encompassed by his oeuvre, Picasso's late period--which he spent in Mougins, in the South of France, until his death in 1973--has a very special position. For the highly charged paintings that Picasso made during the last decade of his life, often featuring close-ups of the kiss or copulation, seem to cling with all their might to the artist's intense sensuality, his desire for embrace. They are marked by a great restlessness whose aim must be to exorcise death itself. "Wild" paintings rapidly executed by Picasso's masterly hand, the late canvases stand in marked contrast to the artist's detailed, carefully executed drawings of the same period, which are dominated by a unique joy in narrative.
This substantial new volume, edited by Werner Spies, former director of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the most important Picasso expert of our day, examines almost 200 works, including paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, shedding light on the specific methods and dialectics in Picasso's later work. In particular, the sense of the artist's race against time is made clear through the exciting dialogue that emerges here between painting and drawing. As Picasso himself said, "The works that one paints are a way of keeping a diary."

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About the Author:

Werner Spies was born in Tuebingen in 1937, and since 1975 he has been a professor of 20th century art at the D sseldorf Art Academy. He was head of the MusEe National de l'Art Moderne at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris from 1997-2000. Spies has gained international recognition as a critic and essayist, authoring several seminal works on 20th-century art in addition to editing a catalogue raisonnE of the works of Max Ernst.

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