• art fraud

  / Detecting fraud
• degenerate art
• art criticism

  / Critical response to early avant-garde art
• Málaga
• Picasso Museum
• Spain

  / Visual arts
• Mona Lisa

  / History
• Wilhelm Uhde

• Guillaume Apollinaire
• Georges Braque

  / Early life
• Jean Cocteau

  / Heritage and youth
• David Douglas Duncan
• Paul Gauguin

  / Legacy of Paul Gauguin
• Julio González
• Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
• Dora Maar
• Lee Miller

  / Solarization and relationship with Man Ray
• Henry Moore

  / Achievements in the 1930s of Henry Moore
• Henri Rousseau

  / Later paintings and recognition of Henri Rousseau
• Ambroise Vollard

• assemblage
• collage
• Cubism
• drawing

  / Pen drawings
• drawing

  / Modern
• etching
• Western painting

  / The 20th century
• Western painting

  / Fantasy and the irrational
• printmaking
• printmaking

  / France

• bullfighting

  / Bullfighting and the arts
• Christology

  / Early 20th century to the present

• France

  / Painting and sculpture
• Latin American art

  / Surrealism

• Guernica
• Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Biography and criticism

Jaime Sabartés, Picasso: An Intimate Portrait, trans. from Spanish by Angel Flores (1948), is a fundamental biographical source, although many Picasso legends began there. Roland Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work, appeared first in 1958 and in a revised form in 1981. Picasso himself approved the biography Antonina Vallentin, Picasso (1963). An important more-recent biography is John Richardson, A Life of Picasso (1991, 1996, and 2007), three of four projected volumes. Other biographies and memoirs, sometimes biased, include Fernande Olivier, Picasso and His Friends, trans. by Jane Miller (1965; originally published in French, 1933), and Loving Picasso: The Private Journal of Fernande Olivier, trans. from French by Christine Baker and Michael Raeburn (2001); Gertrude Stein, Picasso (1938, reprinted 1984); and Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (1964, reissued 1990). Brassaï, Picasso and Company, trans. by Francis Price (1966, also published as Picasso & Co., 1967; originally published in French, 1964), contains conversations with the artist. Pierre Daix, Picasso: Life and Art, trans. by Olivia Emmet (1993; originally published in French, 1987), is a single-volume study of the artist by a scholar who knew him. Brigitte Léal, Christine Piot, and Marie-Laure Bernadac, The Ultimate Picasso, trans. by Molly Stevens and Marjolijn de Jager (2003; originally published in French, 2000), is a monograph.

A number of books document specific topics having to do with Picasso’s life.Elizabeth Cowling, Visiting Picasso: The Notebooks and Letters of Roland Penrose (2006), presents a record of Penrose’s friendship with the artist; and Gertje R. Utley, Picasso: The Communist Years (2000), draws a relationship between Picasso’s personal politics and his art. Pepe Karmel, Picasso and the Invention of Cubism (2003), discusses in depth the development of the artist’s Cubism; and T.J. Clark, Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica (2013), focuses on the artist’s work during the 1920s and ’30s.

General studies that are generously illustrated include Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso, the Early Years: 1881–1907 (1981, reissued 1996; originally published in Catalan, 1980), Picasso Cubism (1907–1917), trans. from Catalan by Susan Branyas, Richard-Lewis Rees, and Patrick Zabalbeascoa (1990, reissued 1996), Picasso: From the Ballets to Drama (1917–1926) (1999; originally published in Catalan, 1999), and Picasso: From the Minotaur to Guernica (1927–1939), ed. by Julià Guillamon and trans. by Graham Thomson and Sue Brownbridge (2011; originally published in Catalan).

Catalogues

Catalogues raisonnés include Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, 33 vol. (1932–78); Pierre Daix and Georges Boudaille, Picasso: The Blue and Rose Periods: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings 1900–1906, trans. by Phoebe Pool, rev. ed. (1967; originally published in French, 1966); Pierre Daix and Joan Rosselet, Picasso: The Cubist Years, 1907–1916, trans. by Dorothy S. Blair (1979; originally published in French); Sebastian Goeppert, Herma Goeppert-Frank, and Patrick Cramer, Pablo Picasso, the Illustrated Books, trans. by Gail Mangold-Vine (1983; originally published in French); Georges Bloch, Pablo Picasso, 4th ed., 4 vol. (1984), which covers the printed graphic work from 1904 to 1972 and ceramic editions from 1949 to 1971; Brigitte Baer, Picasso: peintre-graveur, 7 vol. (1986–96), in French; and Werner Spies and Christine Piot, Picasso: The Sculptures (2000; originally published in French).

Catalogues of the artist’s work in individual media or within specific time periods include Douglas Cooper, Picasso Theatre (1968, reissued 1987; originally published in French, 1967); Gary Tinterow, Master Drawings by Picasso (1981); Arnold Glimcher and Mark Glimcher (eds.), Je Suis le Cahier: The Sketchbooks of Picasso (1986, reissued 1996); and Marilyn McCully, Ceramics by Picasso, 2 vol. (1999). Catalogues on Guernica include Ellen C. Oppler (ed.), Picasso’s Guernica: Illustrations, Introductory Essay, Documents, Poetry, Criticism, Analysis (1988); and Herschel B. Chipp, Picasso’s Guernica: History, Transformations, Meanings (1988).

Exhibition catalogues include Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art (1945, reprinted 1980); William Rubin (ed.), Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective (1980); Douglas Cooper and Gary Tinterow, The Essential Cubism: Braque, Picasso & Their Friends, 1907–1920 (1983); Gert Schiff, Picasso: The Last Years, 1963–1973 (1983); Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 2 vol. (1988); Musée National d’Art Moderne and Tate Gallery, Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, 1953–1972 (1988); William Rubin, Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism (1989); William Rubin (ed.), Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation (1996); Elizabeth Cowling and John Golding, Picasso: Sculptor/Painter (1994); Marilyn McCully (ed.), Picasso: The Early Years, 1892–1906 (1997), and Picasso: Painter and Sculptor in Clay (1998); Steven A. Nash and Robert Rosenblum (eds.), Picasso and the War Years, 1937–1945 (1998); Werner Spies (ed.), Picasso Painting Against Time, which includes essays by German artist Georg Baselitz et al. (2007); John Richardson (curator), Picasso: Mosqueteros (2009); Susan Grace Galassi and Marilyn McCully, Picasso’s Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition (2011); John Richardson and Diana Widmaier Picasso, Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’Amour Fou (2011); Elizabeth Cowling and Richard Kendall, Picasso Looks at Degas (2010); Marilyn McCully, Picasso in Paris 1900–1907 (2011); Anne Umland, Picasso Guitars 1912–1914 (2011); Carmen Giménez, Picasso Black and White (2012); Barnaby Wright (ed.), Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901 (2013); Marilyn McCully, Michael Raeburn, and Jean-Louis Andral, Picasso Côte d’Azur (2013); John Richardson (curator), Picasso & the Camera (2014); and Bruno Gaudichon and Josephine Matamoros (eds.), Picasso Ceramist and the Mediterranean (e-catalog, 2015).

In typical Andalusian fashion, Picasso was baptized with a long string of names (but sources vary on the order): Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano María de los Remedios de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso. Each of these had a particular significance. He was called Pablo after his paternal uncle Canon Pablo (Ruiz Picasso), who had died in 1878; Diego after his paternal grandfather, Diego Ruiz y Almoguera, and his eldest uncle, Diego Ruiz Blasco; José after his father, José Ruiz Blasco; Francisco de Paula after his maternal grandfather Francisco de Paula Picasso Guardeño; Juan Nepomuceno after his godfather, a cousin, Juan Nepomuceno Blasco Barroso; Crispín Crispiniano after the two shoemaker saints whose feast day is October 25, the day of Picasso’s birth; María de los Remedios after his godmother, also a cousin, María de los Remedios Alarcón Herrera; de la Santísima Trinidad meaning “of the Holy Trinity”; and, finally, Ruiz Picasso.

As a youth in A Coruña (1891–94), the young Picasso was known as Pablo Ruiz, and he signed his earliest paintings P. Ruiz. Later, in Barcelona and Madrid (1895–98), he used P. Ruiz Picasso; by the turn of the century, he had shortened this to P.R. Picasso. Once in Paris, he used P.R. Picasso for paintings and drawings, and the name Ruiz for the cartoons he submitted to French journals, but in late 1901 he finally settled on simply Picasso as his signature.