Description
Picasso’s Concrete Sculptures
When Pablo Picasso first learned of the Beto-grave process for pouring and engraving concrete, he “jumped out of his chair as if he had sat on a pin. He was so excited… [His] lightning eye and intuitive intelligence instantly recognized the creative uses that he might be able to make of this new technique.”
Indeed, Picasso’s collaboration with Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar during the next fifteen years led to a series of exuberant public sculptures in Spain, France, Sweden, Norway, Holland, Israel, and the United States (New York, Princeton, Cambridge, and Rolling Meadows, near Chicago).
Picasso’s Concrete Sculptures is a comprehensive history of that collaboration, from the preparation and selection of maquettes, through all the stages of approval, to actual construction and engraving.
Author Sally Fairweather is a prominent Chicago art dealer who was instrumental in the realization there of the monumental Picasso concrete sculpture, The Bather, and she subsequently undertook the prodigious task of researching and writing this first published study of the entire series of sculptures.
Nearly 100 plates – many in full colour – illustrate every one of these majestic works in its final setting, as well as showing the maquettes on which they were based, the photographs signed by Picasso to document his approval, step-by-step shots of construction in progress, and more.
The volume also includes a bibliography and index and a fully documented catalogue raisonné of all the Picasso-Nesiar works in concrete, including some not yet erected.
Picasso’s Concrete Sculptures is an indispensable addition to the literature on this greatest of modern masters, filling an important gap in our knowledge of his oeuvre.
13 colour plates
85 black-and-white illustrations
Picasso’s Concrete Sculptures, Sally Fairweather, Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1982
Hardcover. Grey cloth bound with embossed text. Very good condition.
