Picasso: Challenging the Past Paperback Catalogue

This book showcases the technical dexterity, independence and vitality of Picasso's creative processes, for here we witness the daring transformation of the art of the past into, in Picasso's own words, ‘something else entirely'.

        From his earliest years Pablo Picasso was a passionate student of the European painting tradition.

      His memory for images was voracious, and he amassed an art collection of his own.

      Naturally he was drawn to the Spanish masters Velázquez and Goya but also important to him were such figures as    Rembrandt, Delacroix, Ingres, Manet and Cezanne.

    To download and view extracts from the exhibition catalogue and DVD please visit our Picasso: Challenging the Past microsite www.nationalgallery.co.uk/picasso

       Picasso repeatedly pitted himself against these masters, taking up their signature themes, techniques and artistic concerns in    audacious paintings of his own.

       Sometimes his ‘quotations' were direct, other times highly allusive.

    Always, Picasso made the implicit case that it was he in the twentieth century who    most forcefully reinvigorated the European tradition.