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Title details for Picasso the Foreigner by Annie Cohen-Solal - Available

Picasso the Foreigner

An Artist in France, 1900-1973

by Annie Cohen-Solal
Sam Taylor
Audiobook
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Before Picasso became Picasso—the iconic artist now celebrated as one of France's leading figures—he was constantly surveilled by the police. Amidst political tensions in the spring of 1901, he was flagged as an anarchist by the security services. Though he soon became the leader of the cubist avant-garde, and became increasingly wealthy as his reputation grew worldwide, Picasso's art was largely excluded from public collections in France for the next four decades. In a country where the police and the conservative Académie des Beaux-Arts represented two major pillars of the establishment at the time, Picasso faced a triple stigma—as a foreigner, a political radical, and an avant-garde artist.
In this groundbreaking narrative, Picasso emerges as an artist ahead of his time not only aesthetically but politically, one who ignored national modes in favor of contemporary cosmopolitan forms. Cohen-Solal reveals how, in a period encompassing the brutality of World War I, the Nazi occupation, and Cold War rivalries, Picasso strategized and fought to preserve his agency, eventually leaving Paris for good in 1955. The artist never became a citizen of France, yet he enriched and dynamized its culture like few other figures in the country's history. This book, for the first time, explains how.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 13, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9798350800272
      • File size: 573095 KB
      • Duration: 19:53:56

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 2, 2023
      Art historian Cohen-Solal (Mark Rothko: Towards the Light in the Chapel) examines in this revelatory biography how Spanish artist Pablo Picasso rebelled against the repressive, anti-immigrant French government to become a world treasure. After moving to France as a young artist in 1900, Picasso was surveilled and harassed by police for “not being French” during rising political tensions. On a larger scale, the French state, Cohen-Solal writes, viewed Picasso with suspicion and disdain because he was a foreigner, political provocateur, and a Communist, and refused “out of a desire for ‘purity’” to purchase or exhibit his work even as he became famous worldwide. Three years after creating Guernica in 1937 (a protest against fascism and brutality), Picasso was denied French citizenship, and never again applied. Meanwhile, as fascism spread across Spain and the French remained cold to the artist, Picasso transformed into “the archetype of the politically engaged artist.” Though Cohen-Solal’s meticulous research can be repetitive, her learned assessment of Picasso’s artistic and political affairs lands as timely and deeply considered. Art and cultural history aficionados will find much to savor. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt Agency.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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