Picasso's Picassos

by David Douglas Duncan

Hailed as “the art book of the decade”, PICASSO’S PICASSOS is a magnificent display of Picasso’s personal collection of his own paintings, a milestone of art history revealing for the first time some of the finest and most exciting pictures of his long career. David Douglas Duncan (1916-2018), world famous photographer and author of THE PRIVATE WORLD OF PABLO PICASSO, is one of the few people ever privileged to view the fabulous treasures of La Californie where Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) stored his private collection – more than 500 of his most important paintings, representing every major period and spanning more than sixty years. Duncan was an American photojournalist, known for his dramatic combat photographs, as well as for his extensive domestic photography of Pablo Picasso and his wife Jacqueline. He published seven books of photographs of Picasso in all. Duncan became a close friend of Picasso and was the only person allowed to photograph many of Picasso's private paintings. Duncan lived in Castellaras, France, close to Mougins, where Picasso spent the last 12 years of his life. In PICASSO’S PICASSOS, ninety-six of these already legendary but unknown masterpieces are now seen in color. Duncan spent more than six months photographing Picasso’s Picassos, often with the artist himself at his shoulder, photographing each painting four times to ensure absolute perfection of color. Then Picasso and Duncan spent hours checking the fidelity of each transparency against the paintings themselves. The result is this splendid edition of the greatest “buried treasure” of modern art.

Genres: Art

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

Reviews

[Mike Staresinic]

I found this book to be astounding. As I haven't read about Picasso in a number of years, I felt as surprised by the book as when Picasso showed Duncan a trove of 500 hidden paintings that astounded the art World in 1961 for the Maestro's 80th birthday.

If you love photography and 20th century modernism and Cubism, read on for more interesting detail.

Picasso invited Harper into a closed room of his Villa La Californie to see a secret cache of over 500 completely unknown paintings. Picasso insisted the paintings be photographed in full, in color, and oversaw the precise color representation of the selected images. Picasso frequently provided commentary on the images to correct misunderstandings.

Here are all the themes.

14 images of 1939 paintings feature, including Dora Maar, at a time when their work on Guernica was complete, with the painting on a World tour. Dora and Picasso got domestic, her routines in relaxed dress providing Picasso endless stimulation to work with. It was an incredibly rich period for the artist painting during the tragic closing months of the Spanish Civil War, in the last calm months before Europe was engulfed in World War Two, altering Picasso’s milieu in Paris forever. Following the war, Picasso moved his works and residence to Villa La Californie at Cannes, and invited Duncan with his camera into a locked room that literally no one in the art world suspected existed. As Duncan wrapped up his work in 1961, Picasso was preparing to move out, making this photographic record a unique capsule of 1955-61 residency in Picasso’s life.

Duncan Harper’s photo-essay are full color tipped-in plates. Duncan carefully controlled the precise photography. 3 photofloods were mounted on vertical banks, three to a side, set at a 30 degree angle to both left and right of the paintings, 12-15 feet from the images. Most images 2 seconds at F 6.3 on a single-lens Alpha 6 c Reflex camera. A 50mm F 1.8 lens was specially fitted with a groundglass with control grids by Alpha technicians. Duncan shot on Type A Kodachrome, processed by Kodak in Paris and Lausanne. Breaking with large-format preferences, Duncan broke with precedent to shoot in 35mm in a constrained space loaded with 500 paintings stacked from floor to shoulder height, and so that 8000 photographs could be processed and selected for the book to be ready on in time for the Maestro’s 80th birthday. The images were engraved in Switzerland’s finest engraving plants, attached to backing paper at the Imprimerie Centrale, Lausanne, Switzerland.

[Tim O'Hearn · Rating 5 out of 5]

My family trove contains an endless assortment of interesting books from this era of Harper. This book caught my attention today and I found it to be an enjoyable read. Apparently the first printing of this book with all the color photos filled something like 18 train cars. A painstaking effort for the author, who was also the principal photographer, its significance is not lost on me.