Les Picasso d'Arles

In 1971, two years before his death, Picasso offered the Réattu Museum and the city of Arles a collection of 57 drawings that he had produced over a 35-day period. The drawings are among Picasso’s last works, and they frequently reprise his familiar figures, summoning up reincarnations, metamorphoses and variations of earlier works. These drawings are also remarkable for their material modesty--Picasso drew on anything lying around his workshop, including pieces of cardboard, packaging wrap, brown paper files and blotter-like supports. The lines are clearly executed in haste, with the fluency of a felt-tip rather than traditional ink. Color is applied with wax crayons, while displaying Picasso’s familiar restraint in the range of palette. This French–English bilingual edition presents the full extent of the 1971 donation, and includes a selection of photographic portraits of Picasso by photographers André Villers, Lucien Clergue, Willy Ronis and Robert Doisneau.