Marilyn McCully – författare

Picasso's extraordinary capacity to work in a variety of mediums and styles has amazed his critics since the first years of the century. This collection of critical and personal reactions to Picasso at every stage of his career provides a remarkable account of the many innovations and changes of direction that baffled his contemporaries. Picasso's working methods and his attitudes to his own art are also revealed in conversations and in letters and statements by his closest friends. A Picasso Anthology contains a wide range and variety of contemporary responses to Picasso and his art. There are essential passages from books by his close friends, including Apollinaire, Cocteau, and Roland Penrose; an important body of Catalan and Spanish criticism; reactions from English critics, including Roger Fry and John Middleton; a remarkable collection of Russian criticism of his cubist work, written in the years just before the Revolution; and Czech, Danish, and Italian articles, as well as mainstream texts from France and Germany.

The Mediterranean coast of France witnessed the rise and development of modern art over a century, from Cézanne in the 1860s to Matisse, Picasso and Klein in the 1950s and 1960s. These artists and the many more featured here discovered an inexhaustible source of inspiration in this storied region, whose glittering, languid sea stretches out towards the far horizon beneath brilliant azure skies. Indelibly associated with the classical past, this magical land of eternal spring and spiritual renewal came to signify a state of mind, and avant-garde artists sought to convey the vitality and élan it inspired in them through new paradigms of modernist invention.

It is a widely held view that Picasso’s creative work received a fresh impetus with each new muse in his life. This volume does not discuss his biography or his stylistic phases, however, but pays tribute to the individual fates of the women who left their mark on the artist’s life. Personalities like Françoise Gilot and Dora Maar are among those whose entire life and creative work are acknowledged, not just the years they spent at Picasso’s side.The book sketches the life of ten women in the life of the Spanish artist. Picasso was close to his mother throughout her life and chose her maiden name as his artist’s name. When he wanted to marry the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, she warned him that he would remain married to painting throughout his life. They separated in 1935; the reason was his young muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, who was also soon deposed by Dora Maar. Following various separations, women like the young artist Françoise Gilot also disappeared from Picasso’s canvases, but did not vanish entirely. This book pays tribute to them all. Presented women:Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez (Picasso’s mother), Maria Dolores Ruiz Picasso (Picasso’s sister), Gertrude Stein, Fernande Olivier, Eva Gouel (Marcelle Humbert), Olga Khokhlova, Marie-Thérèse Walter , Dora Maar, Françoise Gilot, Jaqueline Roque