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‘Patrick O’Brian has written much the best biography of Picasso. It is full of information, the judgements both of Picasso as a man and as an artist seem to me remarkably convincing, and it is extremely well-written. In particular, the relationship between Picasso and the Catalan painters is given its true importance, both in his formative years and, as friends, throughout his life.’
Kenneth Clarke
Product Description
A scholarly, passionate and brilliantly-written biography of Pablo Picasso by Patrick O’Brian, the famous author of the much-loved Aubrey-Maturin series, reissued in a stunning new cover.
Patrick O’Brian’s outstanding biography of Picasso explores comprehensively the life of this awe-inspiring artist. Enormously productive and hugely successful, Picasso continues to attract avid, insatiable public interest. O’Brian was a close friend and a neighbour of Picasso’s, and the book reflects the closeness of their friendship and the immense erudition and warm wit of Patrick O’Brian.
The man that emerges from the pages is full of contradictions: hard yet tender, mean yet generous, affectionate but cold, professing communism but retaining an essentially Catholic mentality, private despite his relish of fame. Critically, O’Brian’s is the only biography to fully appreciate the distinctly Mediterranean origins of Picasso’s character and art.
Sex and money, eating and drinking, friends and quarrels, comedies and tragedies, suicides and wars tumble over each other in the vast chaos of Picasso’s experience, He was ‘a man almost as lonely as the sun, but one who glowed with much the same fierce, burning life.’
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First Sentence
PICASSO was born on October 25, 1881, in Malaga, the first, the only son of Dona Maria Picasso y Lopez and her husband, Don Jose Ruiz y Blanco, a painter, a teacher in the city's art school, and the curator of the local museum. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
PICASSO was born on October 25, 1881, in Malaga, the first, the only son of Dona Maria Picasso y Lopez and her husband, Don Jose Ruiz y Blanco, a painter, a teacher in the city's art school, and the curator of the local museum. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oustanding biography and wonderful reading,
By
This review is from: Picasso: A Biography (Paperback)
I've been fascinated by Picasso for years, and if there's a better biography than this I haven't found it. With a character as complex and contradictory as Picasso, 'the truth' is always going be a slippery concept; but this book builds a completely coherent and more plausible picture of the man and the artist than anything else I've found. And it's very rare to find a biography that's so authoritative that's also so entertaining and so readable - I frequently found myself laughing out loud.
Negatives? It's a biography, not a guide to the work, so there are no photographs of the paintings, sculptures, prints... I found myself reading it alongside books that did have the illustrations, or making notes of pictures to look at later. And for some people, O'Brian's conversational style may feel a little old-fashioned; personally I love it, but this is clearly a book from another era. I managed to find a hardback first edition through marketplace. I have a handful of books - a dozen? twenty? - that I know will be friends for the rest on my life; this is clearly one of them.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Picasso, warts and all.,
By
This review is from: Picasso: A Biography (Paperback)
Readers of Patrick O'Brian may have expectations of high adventure in the Napoleonic wars with Aubrey and Maturin, but this thoughful analysis of the life of Picasso is far removed from that. What it does share with O'Brian's fiction is insightful perceptions of an exceptional man and as we would expect from O'Brian, language so beautiful that it is often breathtaking.
O'Brian's personal friendship with Picasso never compromises the objective and sometimes harsh observations penned by O'Brian. His take on the sycophants that surrounded Picasso and his observations on the importance of such people as Gertrude Stein and George Bracht to Picasso's development and evolution as an artist and as a man can't be understated. O'Brian is pragmatic in his evaluation of Picasso's relationships with women. He was not a kind man. His art consumed him and left casualties in its wake. O'Brian sees truth as clearly as Picasso did, but with a more compassionate mind. This is unquestionably the finest biography of Picasso ever written and probably ever will be written. Both Patrick O'Brian and Pablo Picasso have written their last chapter, but as we can still see Picasso in every work of art he produced so we can see O'Brian in all of the books he wrote, again and again and again. Ian Hadley April 2009
5 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Mockery of a Biography,
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This review is from: Picasso: A Biography (Paperback)
The idea of phony like Patrick O'Brian - a man who was not Irish as he claimed but an Englishman* - writing a biography is like giving freedom to a journalist who does not let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Unfortunately, O'Brian's style** is so bad that Picasso's biography is not remotely a good story. The blurb claims that "O'Brian" was a friend of Picasso but, if this was the case, there is no evidence of it. Not once does O'Brian mention any conversation or meeting with Picasso although we do get a lot of vinegary opinions about how badly Picasso was treated by some of his women - particularly Françoise Gilot whose book "Life with Picasso" is a hundred times more entertaining and interesting than this despite its tattle-tattle and gossip. O'Brian's work is not a biography. About 40% consists of vapid descriptions and opinions of a number of Picasso's works. The details about Picasso's life are sparse. The fact that the book does not even have any pictures of the paintings O'Brian refers to makes it even more tedious. However, the most unpleasant part of this book is the way the writer feels free to criticize not only some of the unfortunate women who became involved with Picasso but also his children who understandably grew to dislike their father. I can't recall reading a more idiotic statement than this which aims to justify Picasso's abandonment of his own children: " Parents are supposed to love their children; yet surely there is the implied condition that the children should be reasonably lovable?" No, Mr O'Brian - or whatever your name was - they don't. Children are the responsibility of their parents - no matter how famous or artistic. *If you don't believe me read Dean King's biography where you will learn that he was born in London and his name was Richard Patrick Russ. He was the son of an English mother and a physician of German descent. Nor was he a Catholic as he claimed. ** As you may have guessed I am no fan of his Aubrey/Maturin sea novels either.
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