This book explores the interaction between collectors, dealers and exhibitions in Pablo Picassos entire career. The former two often played a determining role in which artworks were included in expositions as well as their availability and value in the art market. The term collector/dealer must often be used in combination since the distinction between both is often unclear; Heinz Berggruen, for instance, identified himself primarily as a collector, although he also sold quite a few Picassos through his Paris gallery. On the whole, however, dealers bought more often than collectors; and they bought works by artists they were already involved with. While some dealers were above all professional gallery owners; most were mainly collectors who sporadically sold items from their collection. Picassos first known dealer was Pere Manyach, whom he met as he travelled to Paris in 1900 when he was only 19 years old. As his representative, Manyach went about setting up exhibitions of his works at galleries in the French capital, such as Bethe Weills and Ambroise Vollards. Picassos first major exhibition took place in 1901 at Vollards. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Leonce Rosenberg came in after Vollard lost interest during the Cubist period, as they had a manifest preference for the new style. Like Vollard, later dealers often preferred the more conventional Neoclassical phase in Picasso. This was the case with Leonces brother, Paul Rosenberg. The book is organized chronologically and discusses the interaction between Picassos collectors, dealers and exhibitions as they take place. Once collectors acquired an artwork, their willingness to lend them to exhibitions or their necessity to submit them to auction had a direct impact on Picassos prominence in the art world.

Pablo Picasso's continued search for the essential features of perceived objects and his natural abidance to the general principles regulating artistic creation determined his intuitive analysis of the various stages of vision. His exploration of pictorial language is reflected in the well-established periods in the development of Cubism. Progressively, objects were analyzed first by their image (or retinal) and surface (or external) features as viewed from particular observer-oriented viewpoints during the Pre-Cubist and Cezannian Cubist stages; then by viewer-independent, structural features during Analytic Cubism; and finally by categorial features during Synthetic Cubism. This final re-evaluation allowed the artist to treat pictorial language as truly arbitrary, leading to metaphorical correlations between objects that went beyond what was actually depicted on the surface of the canvas.

As early as the ancient Greeks, goddesses served as Muses for artistic creation. In essence, a creatively charged energy inspired the artist, leaving a unique and recognizable mark on the artwork. Picassos relationships with the women in his life was deeply formative, and he often represented them as Muses. He was particularly unabashed in the declaration of his feelings to one of them, Marie-Therese Walter, his youthful mistress of 1927. But at that point Picasso was still married to Olga Khokhlova, thus forced to practice the utmost discretion. His marriage to Olga made him increasingly frustrated with her imposed bourgeois expectations. As a release from this marital burden, Marie-Therese was ever present in his work, often portrayed as Aphrodite with a wreath in her hair, a basket of flowers and fruits by her side. Marie-Therese was the Dream the Muse. This fertile period coincided with the strong influence of surrealism which helped liberate Picassos psyche from the straitjacket that Olgas lifestyle imposed on him. By 1935, however, the model and mistress became a mother to Maya, radically changing the role she previously had. The following year Picasso was introduced to a new woman, Dora Maar, an encounter that signalled the beginning of the end of Marie-Thereses exclusive claim on Picassos affections and the closing of an artistic period clearly marked by fertility. The Aphrodite Period (19241936) provides new insights and analysis of Picassos life as recently uncovered through the research of the Online Picasso Project. This time-span is one of the most illustrative periods of Picassos career in that it clearly demonstrates the close interdependence between sexuality and artistic creativity that characterize Picasso's entire output.

En 1901, deprimido por el suicidio de su intimo amigo, Carles Casagemas, Picasso se sumerge en los lienzos austeros y melancolicos del Periodo Azul. Con solo veintidos anos de edad y desesperadamente pobre, decide restringir su paleta a colores predominantemente frios, sugerentes de la nocturnidad, el misterio y la muerte. Su creciente obsesion con estos temas alcanza su punto culminante con La vie, un lienzo emblematico de la relacion del pintor con la muerte, considerada una fuerza malefica con la que uno debe enfrentarse mediante el poder del exorcismo que le ha sido otorgado como artista/chaman. Esta pintura se ha interpretado como una referencia al ciclo de la vida, existiendo en ella referencias autobiograficas inequivocas. Los bosquejos preliminares muestran sin la menor duda que la figura masculina es un autorretrato del artista. Picasso posteriormente reemplazaria su imagen con la de Casagemas. El critico John Richardson ha sugerido que al sustituir la imagen del suicida por la de un autorretrato, Picasso se conmemora a si mismo, disfrazado como el amigo muerto. Al igual que todas las mascaras, la que Picasso coloca sobre el propio rostro en La vie tiene una funcion metamorfica, revelando al mismo tiempo que oculta. En la carrera artistica picassiana, la mascara se constituye en un objeto que de forma intencionada desestabiliza la identidad del sujeto: llevar una puesta, literal o simbolicamente, significa dejar de ser uno mismo; despojarse de ella supone mostrar una verdad potencialmente mas profunda. El libro analiza el concepto de la mascara desde una perspectiva lacaniana y describe diferentes periodos en la carrera artistica de Picasso con el fin de definir, en lo posible, la compleja personalidad del artista.

This book explores the interaction between collectors, dealers and exhibitions in Pablo Picassos entire career. The former two often played a determining role in which artworks were included in expositions as well as their availability and value in the art market. The term collector/dealer must often be used in combination since the distinction between both is often unclear; Heinz Berggruen, for instance, identified himself primarily as a collector, although he also sold quite a few Picassos through his Paris gallery. On the whole, however, dealers bought more often than collectors; and they bought works by artists they were already involved with. While some dealers were above all professional gallery owners; most were mainly collectors who sporadically sold items from their collection. Picassos first known dealer was Pere Manyach, whom he met as he travelled to Paris in 1900 when he was only 19 years old. As his representative, Manyach went about setting up exhibitions of his works at galleries in the French capital, such as Bethe Weills and Ambroise Vollards. Picassos first major exhibition took place in 1901 at Vollards. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Leonce Rosenberg came in after Vollard lost interest during the Cubist period, as they had a manifest preference for the new style. Like Vollard, later dealers often preferred the more conventional Neoclassical phase in Picasso. This was the case with Leonces brother, Paul Rosenberg. The book is organized chronologically and discusses the interaction between Picassos collectors, dealers and exhibitions as they take place. Once collectors acquired an artwork, their willingness to lend them to exhibitions or their necessity to submit them to auction had a direct impact on Picassos prominence in the art world.