Text by Violette Andres, Stephen Coppel, Ann Dumas, Emmanuelle Hincelin, Christopher Lloyd, Emilia Philippot, Johan Popelard, Claustre Rafart Planas, William H. Robinson.
How Picasso’s genius seized the potential of paper throughout his career
Picasso’s artistic output is astonishing in its ambition and variety. Picasso and Paper examines a particular aspect of his legendary capacity for invention: his imaginative and original use of paper. He used it as a support for autonomous works, including etchings, prints and drawings, as well as for his papier-collé experiments of the 1910s and his revolutionary three-dimensional “constructions,” made of cardboard, paper and string.
Sometimes his use of paper was simply determined by circumstance: in occupied Paris, where art supplies were in short supply, he ripped up paper tablecloths to make works of art. And of course his works on paper comprise the preparatory stages of some of his very greatest paintings.
With reproductions of nearly 400 works of art and a series of insightful new texts by leading authorities on the artist, this sumptuous study reveals the myriad ways in which Picasso explored the potential of paper at different stages of his career. Picasso and Paper is published for an exhibition organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the Cleveland Museum of Art in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris.
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.
A connoisseur of the cheap and mass produced as well as the handmade and the specialised, as he folded, glued together, cut and tore, basted in ink and washes, drew on and rubbed into. Paper for him was a medium (just as was paint, clay or plaster) to be manipulated… The multiple transformations he performed in his art evidence his unnerving vitality, his recklessness and confidence, his altogether too-muchness.
Evening Standard
Melanie McDonagh
Few artists were so sensitive to the sensuous qualities of particular paper [...] but he was the kind of man who’d make the most of anything he could lay his hands on.
Daily Mail
Andrew Marr
I can’t imagine there will be a more comprehensive and thoughtful exhibition of this giant of modern art in my lifetime.
Hyperallergic
Michael Glover
Why was paper so important to him then? Because it gave Picasso an enormous degree of flexibility, physically and mentally. He was never a theoretician... What he did instead was to work through his ideas verblessly, with his hands, and often at the speed of a magician… Paper, in short, was at one with this artist’s nature.
The Times
Waldemar Januszczak
Reveals the full scope of his brilliance
Guardian
Laura Cumming
Nothing less than an accumulation of sacred relics.
Londonist
Editors
There's Brilliance At Every Turn In ‘Picasso And Paper.’
Time Out London
Editors
The work is a whirlwind of innovation, and here, on paper, Picasso is doing it all at his most intimate and unguarded… this is a show filled with jaw-dropping moments of beauty.
The Times
Editors
This torrent of a show isn’t really about Picasso and paper: It’s about the magic of his hands: The urge to make.
Blackbook
Ken Scrudato
While his ability to re-envision people, places and objects was arguably without peer, equally laudable was Picasso’s ostensibly effortless ability to work across a wide swatch of mediums and materials.
Airmail
Picasso didn’t simply put pencil to paper, he tore, twisted, and burned it in endless experimentation, sometimes using it to create 3-D forms...these works, embod[y] Picasso’s ever roaming imagination.
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
"Seated Woman (Dora)" (1938) is reproduced from Picasso and Paper, published to accompany the "spectacular" exhibition currently on hiatus at Royal Academy of Arts, according to The Guardian, which described the show as "nothing less than an accumulation of sacred relics." While nothing can compare to seeing the show in person, this superb 328-page exhibition catalog featuring 400 color reproductions and a host of scholarly essays does transport. And why wouldn't it? Picasso used every paper available to him, regardless of its normal function or archival durability, from antique papers with distinctive watermarks to wallpaper, newsprint and table napkins. He tore and folded paper, illustrated poems and letters, drew on envelopes, hotel stationery, napkins and much more. The astonishing range of works gathered here prove that, rather than using paper primarily for preliminary studies, Picasso "invented a universe of art" involving paper in almost any form, in the words of William H. Robinson. "This activity sprang from his inexhaustible compulsion to expand the boundaries of thought and aesthetic experience, and constitutes a significant contribution to the history of modern art."
"Seated Woman (Dora)" (1938) is reproduced from Picasso and Paper, published to accompany the "spectacular" exhibition currently on hiatus at Royal Academy of Arts, which The Guardian describes as "nothing less than an accumulation of sacred relics." While nothing can compare to seeing the show in person, this superb 328-page exhibition catalog featuring 400 color reproductions and a host of scholarly essays does transport. And why wouldn't it? Picasso used every paper available to him, regardless of its normal function or archival durability—from antique papers with distinctive watermarks to wallpaper, newsprint and table napkins. He tore and folded paper, illustrated poems and letters, drew on envelopes and hotel stationery, made photographs, etchings, prints and much more. The astonishing range of works gathered here prove that, rather than using paper primarily for preliminary studies, Picasso "invented a universe of art" involving paper in almost any form, in the words of William H. Robinson. "This activity sprang from his inexhaustible compulsion to expand the boundaries of thought and aesthetic experience, and constitutes a significant contribution to the history of modern art."
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.25 x 11.25 in. / 328 pgs / 400 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $60.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $85 ISBN: 9781912520176 PUBLISHER: Royal Academy of Arts AVAILABLE: 3/24/2020 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by Royal Academy of Arts. Text by Violette Andres, Stephen Coppel, Ann Dumas, Emmanuelle Hincelin, Christopher Lloyd, Emilia Philippot, Johan Popelard, Claustre Rafart Planas, William H. Robinson.
How Picasso’s genius seized the potential of paper throughout his career
Picasso’s artistic output is astonishing in its ambition and variety. Picasso and Paper examines a particular aspect of his legendary capacity for invention: his imaginative and original use of paper. He used it as a support for autonomous works, including etchings, prints and drawings, as well as for his papier-collé experiments of the 1910s and his revolutionary three-dimensional “constructions,” made of cardboard, paper and string.
Sometimes his use of paper was simply determined by circumstance: in occupied Paris, where art supplies were in short supply, he ripped up paper tablecloths to make works of art. And of course his works on paper comprise the preparatory stages of some of his very greatest paintings.
With reproductions of nearly 400 works of art and a series of insightful new texts by leading authorities on the artist, this sumptuous study reveals the myriad ways in which Picasso explored the potential of paper at different stages of his career. Picasso and Paper is published for an exhibition organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the Cleveland Museum of Art in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris.
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.
