Diana Widmaier-Picasso – författare

An elegantly produced double portrait of the affinities and differences between two of the 20th century's greatest artists, Louise Bourgeois & Pablo Picasso Coupling the works of Louise Bourgeois and Pablo Picasso—at first glance, an unlikely pair—results in a thought-provoking discourse on the artists’ formal and iconographic links. Inspired by archaic and primitive sources, both Bourgeois and Picasso continually explored and developed interpretations of fertility and mother deities; late in life, both artists focused on eroticism, sexuality, and intimacy. This beautifully designed book, with its cloth boards and title stamping, builds upon the complex conversation about gender the exhibition sparks, with texts by exhibition curator Marie-Laure Bernadac (former curator at the Louvre, Picasso Museum, and Centre Pompidou), Émilie Bouvard (art historian and curator), Ulf Küster (curator at the Fondation Beyeler), Gérard Wajcman (psychoanalyst and writer) and Diana Widmaier Picasso (art historian).

In 1917 Pablo Picasso travelled to Rome and Naples with Jean Cocteau and Igor Stravinskij. During this trip, for the first time, he could admire directly Hellenistic and Roman sculpture, that of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, but also the Roman frescoes of Pompei. The first exhibition dedicated to Picasso's sculpture to be held in Rome, and its accompanying catalogue, were conceived as a journey through the centuries that chronologically follows the interpretation of forms and different themes - stories and myths, bodies and figures, objects and fragments - in sculpture. The exhibition of masterpieces of the great Spanish master is accompanied by previously unpublished images of his sculpture studios (by Edward Quinn) that narrate the context in which these works were born. The catalogue includes essays that explore the visual and conceptual dialogue between the works of Picasso and works of the past, illustrating and examining over fifty works, some of which have never been exhibited before.