Picasso's Concrete Sculptures

Book excerpt: Picasso's concrete sculptures. When Pablo Picasso first learned of the Betograve Process for pouring and engraving concrete, he "jumped out of his chair as if he had sat on a pin. He wax so excited .... [His] lightning eye and intuitive intelligence instantly recognized the creative uses that he might be able to make of this new technique." Indeed, Picasso's collaboration with Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar during the next fifteen years led to a series of exuberant public sculptures in Spain, France, Sweden, Norway, Holland, Israel, and the United States (New York, Princeton, Cambridge, and Rolling Meadows, near Chicago). Picasso's Concrete Sculptures is a comprehensive history of that collaboration, from the preparation and selection of marquettes, theough all the stages of approval, to actual construction and engraving. Author Sally Fairweather is a prominent Chicago art dealer who was instrumental in the realization there of the monumental Picasso concrete sculpture, The Bather, and she subsequently undertook the prodigious task of researching and writing this first published study of the entire series of sculptures. Nearly 100 plates -- many in full color -- illustrate every one of these majestic works in its final setting, as well as showing the maquettes on which they were based, the photographs signed by Picasso to document his approval, step-by-step shots of construction in progress, and more. This volume also includes a bibliography and index and a fully documented catalogue raisonne of all the Picasso-Nesjar works in concrete, including some not yet erected. Picasso's Concrete Sculptures is an indispensable addition to the literature on this greatest of modern masters, filling an important gap in his knowledge of his oeuvre"-- Front flap.