Picasso: Between Cubism and Classicism 1915-1925 is a unique overview of the artist’s earlier and lesser-known years. This sumptuous volume illustrates Pablo Picasso’s celebrated journey undertaken in 1917, but also the periods just before and just after. He visited both Rome and Naples in the company of Jean Cocteau, French poet, writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker, Russian Igor Stravinsky, composer, pianist, and conductor, and the Ballet Russes.
lt was during this ‘characterful’ trip that he met leading ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova, who eventually became his first wife. This book contains a particularly beautiful and iconic portrait of Olga painted during the same year as their travels together. It is recognisably a Picasso but showing the artist’s more traditional face, and one which is seldom on show these days. Dance evidently enchanted the artist …or was it the dancer who compelled him to use that as a recurring theme? There is movement, theatre and drama within these pages.
Picasso’s growth in complexity
Picasso: Between Cubism and Classicism 1915-1925 showcases Picasso’s fascination with different techniques, but many works have a focus on that trip, which must have been so very stimulating for the whole company. Here we find letters, sketches, canvases, photographs. The artworks show what many perceive as Picasso’s growth in complexity. The focus on the classics is very evident and that continued in different forms for the whole of his career. One finds Greek Tragedy played out on other canvases later in life; but even these echo another age.
This is a wonderful volume of gift quality and will likely become a treasured addition to the shelves of any art lover, any student of Picasso, and anybody who is interested in his undoubted influence in art, even after the passage of a century. Skira Editore have presented another polished and attractive masterpiece with Picasso: Between Cubism and Classicism 1915-1925.
Picasso: Between Cubism and Classicism 1915-1925
Authors: Anunciata von Liechtenstein, Olivier Berggruen
Published by: Skira Editore
Price: £36.00
ISBN-13: 978-8857236933