Picasso: Challenging the Past

From his earliest years Pablo Picasso was a passionate student of the European painting tradition. He was naturally drawn to the Spanish masters Velázquez and Goya, but such figures as Rembrandt, Delacroix, Ingres, Manet, and Cézanne were also important artistic heroes. Picasso repeatedly pitted himself against these masters, taking up their signature themes, techniques, and artistic concerns in audacious paintings of his own. Sometimes his “quotations” were direct, other times highly allusive. Always Picasso made the implicit case that it was he in the 20th century who most forcefully reinvigorated the European tradition.

Liberally illustrated with 150 full-color plates of works by Picasso and those who inspired him, the book showcases the technical dexterity, independence, and vitality of Picasso’s creative processes as he daringly transformed the art of the past into, as he described it, “something else entirely."

Library Journal

This excellent catalog, published to accompany an exhibition at the National Gallery in London, illustrates Pablo Picasso's ability to look into the tradition of European art and transform it to create a new image, a new style, and a new vernacular. El Greco, Ingres, Poussin, Velázquez, and their contemporaries emerge from Picasso's canvases transformed and transmogrified yet strangely reminiscent. Seeing the exhibition, one realizes that familiar works take on a new meaning, and one looks upon them in a new manner. The paintings in the show are well documented and well reproduced in 150 full-color plates, and the accompanying essays by Cowling (Picasso: Style and Meaning) and five other authors, curators, and art historians treat the development of this aspect of Picasso's work in chronological order, giving the reader a good sense of the imagination and innovation of a great artist at work. VERDICT As a focused selection of one aspect of the enormous body of Picasso's work, this is a valuable addition to the literature and an excellent scholarly guide to the underlying themes of tradition and innovation.—Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York

Elizabeth Cowling is Professor Emeritus of History of Art at Edinburgh University. Her publications include Picasso: Style and Meaning and Degas/Picasso (distributed by Yale). Susan Grace Galassi is senior curator at the Frick Collection, New York. She is the author of Picasso’s Variations on the Masters. Christopher Riopelle is curator of post-1800 painting at the National Gallery, London. He is co-author of Renoir Landscapes: 1865-1883 (distributed by Yale), among many other books. Anne Robbins is assistant curator of post-1800 painting at the National Gallery, London, and the author of Cézanne in Britain (distributed by Yale).