Picasso's world of children
By: Werner Spies ; [translation from the German by John William Gabriel].
Contributors: Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973.
Series: [Pegasus library]
Publisher: Prestel; Distributed by Neues Pub. Co.
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Munich; New York; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 126
Subjects: Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973 -- Themes, motives.; Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Children in art.
Description: The theme of children and childhood, a highly popular subject with the great painters and sculptors of the past, has received comparatively little attention in twentieth-century art. Here, as in so many other respects, the work of Pablo Picasso stands out as a major exception. Picasso's many portraits and other depictions of children constitute one of the most immediately accessible and appealing facets of his extraordinarily varied oeuvre.

This fascinating new study by Werner Spies, one of the foremost connoisseurs of Picasso's work, examines the artist's approach to the subject of the child against the background of his turbulent personal life, the development of this restlessly innovative aesthetic thinking, an the general ideas about the significance of childhood and youth that have played such a key role in shaping modern culture.

Sumptuously illustrated, and packed with original and stimulating insights, the book offers an enticing introduction to Picasso's magical world of children, and to his visual universe as a whole.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 122).
Series statement from jacket.
Table of contents: title: Islands in the oeuvre; title: Childhood: a strategy of beginning; title: The early years and the Blue Period; title: Joyless children; title: The child as symbol; title: "There was never any more inception than there is now"; title: The disguises of the Rose Period; title: Primitivism and childhood; title: Cubism: the search for a world without childhood; title: The motif returns; title: Neoclassicism and stylistic pluralism; title: The courtly portrait of his firstborn; title: Private life and mythological projections; title: The dead children: Guernica and the Charnel House; title: The limits of representation; title: "First steps"; title: Objets trouves and toys; title: Entering the child's perspective; title: Late work.