Edited with text by Raphaël Bouvier. Text by Claire Bernardi, Laurent Le Bon, Marilyn McCully, Stéphanie Molins, Emilia Philippot.
Charting Picasso’s journey from the bohemians of the Blue Period to the Rose Period’s acrobats and ingenues, this book celebrates some of the 20th century’s most beloved masterpieces
Published for the most ambitious exhibition ever staged by the Fondation Beyeler, this book is devoted to the paintings and sculptures of the young Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) from the so-called Blue and Rose periods, between 1901 and 1906. The masterpieces of these crucial years, every one of them a milestone on Picasso's path to preeminence as the 20th century's most famous artist, are presented together, in an unparalleled concentration and quality. Picasso's pictures from this phase are some of the finest and most emotionally compelling examples of modern painting, and are counted among the most valuable works in the entire history of art. Throughout the Blue period, Picasso depicted the material deprivation and psychological suffering of people on the margins of society, before turning, in 1905 (when he had settled in Paris), to the themes of the Rose period: jugglers, acrobats and harlequins. In the summer of 1906, Picasso spent several weeks in the Spanish Pyrenees, where he produced a profusion of paintings and sculptures uniting classical and archaic ideals of the body. His increasing deformation and fragmentation of the figure throughout this period—apparent in the "primitivist" pictures, especially the female nudes—heralded the emergence of the new pictorial language of cubism. The works of the Blue and Rose periods have a universal appeal and poignancy. Existential themes—life, love, sexuality, fate and death—find embodiment in the delicate beauty of young female and male figures, and in depictions of children and of old people scarred by life, whose rendering by Picasso shows happiness and joy, but also loneliness and melancholy.
"Arlequin Assisi" (1901) is reproduced from 'The Early Picasso.'
"Self-Portrait" (1901) is reproduced from Picasso: Blue and Rose Periods, the exceptional exhibition catalogue from Hatje Cantz and Fondation Beyeler. One of the first works to explore the full potential of the blue monochrome, the painting presents the artist "as a member of bohemian society, pale-faced and hollow-cheeked, deliberately made to seem older than his years, and enveloped in a thick overcoat that turns his body into an indistinct mass," Stéphanie Molins writes. "Photographs of the painter at the age of twenty bear witness to a completely different physiognomy… The color blue, expressing deep melancholy and physical suffering as well as moral anguish, affects every aspect of the composition, articulated in areas of blue-green and midnight blue. The hypnotic gaze and the psychological intensity of the depiction recall some of Vincent van Gogh's self-portraits, while the red beard, drawn in meticulous detail, is often seen as a tribute to the Dutch master." Picasso kept this painting throughout his life, and included it in a 1932 retrospective at the top of a family polyptych, flanked by his son Paulo and his wife Olga, indicating its importance. continue to blog
Painted just a few months before Picasso's revolutionary "Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon," "Nude on Red Background (Young Woman with Loose Hair)" (1906) is reproduced from Picasso: Blue and Rose Periods, the gorgeous new oversized exhibition catalogue from Hatje Cantz and Fondation Beyeler. In a published interview in the book, noted Picasso biographer John Richardson comments that the greatest ambiguity in the artist's work can be seen in his images of prostitutes, "which bear the stamp of instant compassion and equally of an eroticism that is sometimes sadistic." Interviewer Stéphane Guégan notes Richardson's assertion that the work of this period, "haunted by the fear, widespread at the time, of venereal disease—rarely seeks to incriminate or denounce, and that there was 'more Romantic agony than social criticism' in these images of women locked up in quarantine or of existential solitude." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 10.75 x 12 in. / 238 pgs / 169 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $85.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $115 ISBN: 9783775745055 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 4/23/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited with text by Raphaël Bouvier. Text by Claire Bernardi, Laurent Le Bon, Marilyn McCully, Stéphanie Molins, Emilia Philippot.
Charting Picasso’s journey from the bohemians of the Blue Period to the Rose Period’s acrobats and ingenues, this book celebrates some of the 20th century’s most beloved masterpieces
Published for the most ambitious exhibition ever staged by the Fondation Beyeler, this book is devoted to the paintings and sculptures of the young Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) from the so-called Blue and Rose periods, between 1901 and 1906. The masterpieces of these crucial years, every one of them a milestone on Picasso's path to preeminence as the 20th century's most famous artist, are presented together, in an unparalleled concentration and quality. Picasso's pictures from this phase are some of the finest and most emotionally compelling examples of modern painting, and are counted among the most valuable works in the entire history of art.
Throughout the Blue period, Picasso depicted the material deprivation and psychological suffering of people on the margins of society, before turning, in 1905 (when he had settled in Paris), to the themes of the Rose period: jugglers, acrobats and harlequins. In the summer of 1906, Picasso spent several weeks in the Spanish Pyrenees, where he produced a profusion of paintings and sculptures uniting classical and archaic ideals of the body. His increasing deformation and fragmentation of the figure throughout this period—apparent in the "primitivist" pictures, especially the female nudes—heralded the emergence of the new pictorial language of cubism.
The works of the Blue and Rose periods have a universal appeal and poignancy. Existential themes—life, love, sexuality, fate and death—find embodiment in the delicate beauty of young female and male figures, and in depictions of children and of old people scarred by life, whose rendering by Picasso shows happiness and joy, but also loneliness and melancholy.
