Pablo Picasso: Erotic Sketchs/Erotische Skizzen

Pablo Picasso: Erotic Sketchs/Erotische Skizzen
By Prestel Publishing

Publisher: Prestel Publishing
Publication Date: 2006
ISBN: 3-7913-3709-2
ISBN: 978-3-7913-3709-8
64pp

Picasso loved nudes!  The nude has been well represented in his work throughout his artistic career exploring far more than simply the physical nude form.  He freely explored sexuality.  Pablo Picasso: Erotic Sketches showcases thirty-one of Picasso’s nude and erotic sketches spanning from 1901 through 1972.  What is fascinating is that the book presents these works in a semi-chronological order.  As you progress through the book, you get a general sense for the direction of Picasso’s expressive treatment of the nude and sexuality.

The book is an elegant hardcover that measures 7 ½” x 9 ¼” with a cloth spine and a silky red ribbon interwoven through the covers to bind the book shut.  The cover image showcases The Lovers (1904) and helps set the tone for the presentation to come.  The image layout is carefully done and the presentation is very clean allowing the viewer to enjoy the images without being distracted by text or captions.

There are a total of thirty-one illustration ranging from soft sensual nudes to highly charged eroticism.  The majority of the illustrations are of an erotic nature with the essence of the female sex in full view in many of the illustrations.  A few of the illustrations depict sexual acts such as lovemaking, masturbation and cunnilingus.  The sketches are executed in a variety of media such as charcoal, Indian ink, colored oil pencils, watercolor, oil, and pastel to name a few.  The artistic style is also diverse.  Works such as The Odalisque (no date) and Nude Man Looking at Woman Sleeping (1922) are careful studies with clean lines while Minotaur Raping a Woman (1933) and The Artist and His Model (1933) show energetic, slightly chaotic, movements of line to represent form.

The red ribbon that binds the covers and the cover image of the nude couple engaged in love hint at the fact that this book may not be intended for everybody.  Indeed many of the images are quite explicit; however, it is a fair representation of Picasso’s love for sexuality.  With thirty-one illustrations, the book is clearly not intended to be an archive of all of Picasso’s works of the nude or eroticism.  Instead it represents a careful selection that does not overwhelm the viewer. Perhaps the greatest value is the ability to study the techniques used in treating this subject over much of Picasso’s artistic life.

The only criticism would be in referencing the works in the List of Works Illustrated hidden at the very back of the book.  The list gives important data such as the title of the work, date, media used and the location of each piece illustrated; however, the works are listed in the order in which they appear.  The pages containing images do not show page numbers and there is no running count printed alongside each piece.  If one where curious about the title, year or media used for a particular illustration, you would have to count the illustrations from the beginning up to that illustration and use that count to find the data.  A little tedious but the illustrations and the overall presentation is of excellent quality and far outweighs this minor inconvenience.