Picasso 1932 exhibition book (paperback)

'I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.' – Pablo Picasso 'Even by his own extraordinary standards, 1932 was Pablo Picasso’s ‘year of wonders’. His paintings reached a new level of sensuality, while the dazzling opening of his first-ever retrospective exhibition cemented his status as the most famous artist in the world. All of this against a background of economic depression and a tidal wave of rising nationalisms. Published to accompany a landmark exhibition at Tate Modern this lavishly illustrated publication makes use of fresh research to lay bare the contradictions of the artist’s existence at this pivotal moment. Artworks, texts and archive photographs together reveal a life divided between public grandeur and the solitude of the studio, bourgeois family life and secret love affair, painting and sculpture, pleasure and darkness. Common myths are stripped away to disclose the man and the artist in his full complexity, showing the creative abundance with which he gave expression to a year of love, fame and tragedy. Achim Borchardt-Hume is Director of Exhibitions and Programmes, Tate Modern. Nancy Ireson is Curator, International Art, Tate Modern.