Picasso - Brigitte Lal

Throughout his artistic career Picasso was fascinated by both caricature and the idea of the grotesque: light and dark representations of the distorted human figure. Picasso: From Caricature to Metamorphosis of Style, which accompanies a major exhibition at the Museu Picasso, Barcelona, is the first book to examine the distortion of the figure as a central creative force in Picasso's art and as a springboard for his continual process of stylistic metamorphosis.

This journey through Picasso's work takes us from the satirical illustration and portrait caricature of the 1890s to the radical distortion of the figure in Les Demoiselles D'Avignon and later Cubist portraits; from light-hearted vignettes of Diaghilev, Bakst and Apollinaire to the monstrous, Surrealist portraits of women of the 1920s-40s; from portraits of the artist as clown to the Verve series of meditations on the painter and his model. Finally we see Picasso as caricatured by his entourage: the tables are turned.

Caricatures, monsters, puppets and grotesque figures populate the pages of this book, which is illustrated with 400 reproductions of key works by Picasso drawn from public and private collections worldwide: paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics and prints. More than 100 of the works reproduced are previously unpublished. With a series of interpretative essays by an international cast of distinguished Picasso scholars, the book is essential reading for all those with an interest in the life and work of a twentieth-century master.