Picasso

TASCHEN 25 - Special edition!

"I wanted to be a painter, and I became Picasso," declared Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in an apt survey of a triumphant career.

He had good grounds for the confidence palpable in his statement, for in the history of 20th century art, his name stands out over all the others. In Picasso`s paintings, drawings, lithographs, ceramics, and sculptures, he was tirelessly inventive and innovative, exhibiting an aesthetic bravado that kept him one step ahead of his contemporaries. From subject matter to new forms and techniques to new media, Picasso got there first. The Spanish artist's enormous output, from the eight-year-old's beginnings to the late work of a man of ninety-one, is surely one of the most diverse and creatively energetic in the whole history of art, and it is no exaggeration to see him as the genius of the century.

Carsten-Peter Warncke's study is a thorough review of Picasso's entire oeuvre, from the early Blue and Rose Periods, through the analytic and synthetic cubism and classicist phase all the way up to the art of the old savage Picasso.

About the editor:
Ingo F. Walther (1940-2007) was born in Berlin and studied medieval studies, literature, and art history in Frankfurt am Main and Munich. He has published numerous books on the art of the Middle Ages and of the 19th and 20th centuries. Walther's many titles for TASCHEN include Picasso, Art of the 20th Century, and Codices Illustres.

About the author:
Carsten-Peter Warncke studied art history, classical archaeology, and literature in Vienna, Heidelberg, and Hamburg, and received his doctorate from the latter in 1975. He is professor of art history at the University of Göttingen.