Picasso
Creator and Destroyer

I had read my first book on Picasso already when I was a teenager and it was the well-known ‘Life with Picasso’ by Françoise Gilot. I could not understand back then why actually Picasso got married to that Russian ballerina Olga Koklova. Now I know it thanks to this very thorough and systematic biog......more

Not bad. Picasso is certainly a much more intriguing character than Arianna Huffington's writing style. It was a good read once I got over her style and (to me) odd sentence structure coming out of left field every once in a while. Good overview of Picasso's life that makes me want to explore his lif......more

My first thought when I finished this book was, "Wow." Before I read this book, I thought of Picasso as an incredible artist but a pig of a man because of the way he had treated the women in his life, as well as his children. After reading this book, that impression was not dispelled. I'm not entire......more

Harkening back to an earlier book I read "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson, I believe they would have to invent a whole new test for Pablo Picasso because he would be off the charts. However, the Modern Lovers' ode to the artist is accurate in that "nobody ever called Pablo Picasso an asshole" (at......more

Quite fascinating. Some people have been critical because it is so negative on him and his relationships on women, but based on the evidence I don't think much of the criticisms are too far off. Particularly interesting is his relationship with Francoise Gilot, the one woman he wounded but didn't de......more