Pablo: Art Masters Series

Julie Birmant and Clément Ouebrerie (Aya) have created a beautiful graphic biography that pays tribute to one of the 20th century's most prolific and best-loved artists. Told from the point of view of Fernande Olivier, Picasso's former lover and muse, Pablo chronicles Picasso's early career as a struggling artist in 1900s Paris, living among a group of colorful characters, whose friendships and rivalries (particularly with Henri Matisse) helped shape his art.

Birmant's Picasso is a man obsessed with his own appetites, whose artistic vision is little appreciated until American writer and benefactress Gertrude Stein steps in as his champion. Birmant makes clear the debt Picasso owes to his Bateau-Lavoir network, and Oubrerie's panels are spun in a visually dreamy palate that highlights the stages of Picasso's work, from the erotica that dominated his earliest paintings, to his later forays into Cubism and modern art. Pablo is brilliant and engaging, and a worthy addition to any Picasso canon. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

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