Picasso's portraits are matched to his fluctuating social circles in
this look at the maestro's evolution
From the beginning of his career until its end, Pablo Picasso's prime
subject was the human figure, and portraiture remained a favorite genre
for the artist. Picasso's portraiture reflected the full range of his
innovative styles--Symbolist, Cubist, Neoclassical, Surrealist,
Expressionist. Depicting people in his intimate circle rather than
working to commission enabled Picasso to take an expressive, radically
experimental approach to making portraits.
However extreme his departure from representational conventions, Picasso
never wholly abandoned drawing from the sitter or ceased producing
portraits of classic beauty and naturalism. He remained in constant
dialogue with the art of the past, and his portraits often alluded to
canonical masterpieces. Treating favorite Old Masters as indecorously as
his intimate friends, he created suites of free "variations" after
Velázquez's "Las Meninas" and Rembrandt's "The Prodigal Son."
These dizzying stylistic shifts of Picasso's long career can be traced
through their manifestations in his portraits. Picasso Portraits tells
this story thematically, with a focus on Picasso's creative process
rather than his biography. Issues addressed in depth in this volume
include Picasso's exploitation of familiar poses and formats, his
sources of inspiration among the Old Masters and the relationship
between observation, memory and fantasy.
The legendary life and career of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) spanned
nearly the entire 20th century and ushered in some of its most
significant artistic revolutions. Hard to overestimate in importance or
originality, Picasso's style is perhaps best captured in the words of
his friend Paul Éluard: "Picasso paints like God or the devil."
