Olivier Berggruen

Picasso: Seven Decades of Drawing surveys Pablo Picasso's prodigious career as a draftsman, including over 40 examples on loan from private collections spanning nearly 70 years of the artist's long and cele-brated career. The book showcases drawings in a wide range of media, from works in charcoal and crayon to coloured pencil, collage or papiers colles, graphite, gouache, ink, pastel, and watercolour. Some of the drawings on loan are rarely on view and they provide insight into the evolution of his iconic paintings, such as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica, while others stand alone as virtuoso, independent works, highlighting Picasso's mastery of line, form, and medium. The book ultimately examines how drawing serves as the vital thread connecting all of Picasso's art.

One hundred years on, this book portrays Picasso's legendary 1917 journey to Rome and Naples with Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky and the company of Sergei Diagilhev's Ballet Russes. lt was during this trip that he met and fell in love with the company's leading dancer, Olga Khokhlova, who would become his first wife. In addition to the extraordinary weeks spent in ltaly, which were pivotal for the development of Picasso's art during the postwar years, the monograph also examines his production immediately after, with particular reference to the ballets Parade and Pulcinella, as well as those paintings indebted to the iconographic and cultural worlds to which these ballets introduced him. The book focuses on Picasso's ability to experiment in different genres, from still-life to portraiture, from the playful and decorative collages executed during World War I, to the sophisticated realism of the years of his association with Diagilhev. It also documents the long-term impact of the ltalian journey on Picasso's art. With over 100 works, including iconic paintings, drawings and photographs, Between Cubism and Neoclassicism shows masterpieces and key works of this period, illuminating the classical elements throughout the artist's career.