Picasso: Creator and Destroyer /
Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington
- New York Simon & Schuster 1988
- 558 p.
"I, the king" -- "C'est la vie" -- The door to manhood -- Passions and betrayals -- A woman for the new season -- Genius in black tie -- Goddesses and doormats -- The Minotaur and his muse -- The war within and without -- A window to the absolute -- Comrade Picasso -- "Truth does not exist" -- The loss of innocence -- "Nobody leaves a man like me" -- "All the lions have shriveled up" -- Maman and Monseigneur -- "What's it all about?"
This volume is a biography of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, Picasso is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. In this highly critical portrait, the author paints Picasso as a wretchedly flawed genius, sadistic and treacherous, a liar who betrayed friends and colleagues, and a misogynist who tormented a succession of wives and mistresses. The author draws on several sources for her biography, including interviews with Picasso's daughter, Maya, and Francoise Gilot, his mistress of ten years and the mother of two of his children. This work seizes chiefly on the dark side of genius; Picasso is examined in terms of his personal cruelties.; A biography of the twentieth-century painter discussing his many relationships with women, his children, his philosophies and his work.