The Essential Pablo Picasso

The Essential

by Ingrid Schaffner

Focusing on Pablo Picasso, this is one of an illustrated series which provides accounts of the lives of individual artists, professional and personal anecdotes, and concise definitions of cultural and social movements that shaped their work. The book discusses how Picasso rose to eminence - and stayed there. It depicts him as tender romantic and ferocious egotist, secure artist and restless explorer of new forms, macho aficionado of bullfights and heartbroken witness to war, and creative collaborator and individual superstar.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another cheap pick-up at the Hershey Library book sale. I'm not much of an art appreciative person, nor am I very good at reading into art the meanings, the subtleties or the levels of complexity. And I also only had a rudimentary, vague idea of Picasso's life.

But this did a wonderful job of describing his artwork through the ages, describing his life, the times, the cultures, etc, that it really brought a lot of great information to the forefront on him.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picasso was a very complicated man with a messy love life. He had a few marriages, different mistresses and lovers over the years and had 4 children with 3 different women. This book has a "sanitized" version of his private life. But, it does a good job of saying a little bit about everything. It tells a bit about his family, friends and contemporaries, the different styles (blue period, rose period, cubism, etc) he tried over the years, and his amazing work ethic. A short summary of some of the highlights of his career.