Picasso: Painting Against Time

A profound reassessment of Picasso’s dynamic later work, which shows the greatest painter of the twentieth century in a race with the time remaining to him.

No other painter has had such a more lasting influence on twentieth-century art than Pablo Picasso. Among the many phases and styles found in his oeuvre, his late period has a special position. His late paintings, featuring close-ups of the kiss and copulation, cling with all their might to sensuality and the embrace; they are marked by a great restlessness whose aim is to exorcise death itself. The “wild” paintings rapidly executed by his masterly hand are contrasts to his detailed, carefully executed drawings, which are dominated by a unique joy in narrative.

This volume, edited by Werner Spies, former director of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the most important Picasso expert of our day, examines almost two hundred works—paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures - shedding light on the special work methods and dialectics in Picasso’s later work. In particular, the exciting dialogue between painting and drawing, developed during his years in Mougins, shows that the greatest artist of the twentieth century was engaged in a race against time.