Picasso The Foreigner

Why was Picasso branded as an anarchist by the Police authorities on 18 June 1901, just two weeks before his first exhibition opened in Paris? Why were almost seven hundred paintings, drawings and other works from his cubist period sequestrated by the French government on 1 December 1914, for almost ten years? Why were his pictures almost totally absent from the country’s public collections until 1947? And finally, how was it that Picasso never became a French citizen? Although the artist’s work has generated exponentially increasing numbers of exhibitions, studies and comments commensurate with his immense talent, paradoxically Picasso’s status as ‘a foreigner’ has been neglected. This book aims to explore the topic.

To elucidate it, we have to exhume layers of buried documents, sleuth out unexploited archives, search through every box, open up every envelope, decipher untold manuscripts. The findings upend our understanding and reveal the unimagined complexity of this artist’s status.

“Un étranger nommé Picasso” (a foreigner named Picasso) whisks us off in the wake of a supremely talented artist and strategist, deftly weaving his way through a France beset by internal strife. We see how he imposes his masterful work, assembles his own networks and emerges to impel the modernisation of the country. A model to study, perhaps to follow.

Prix Femina for essays, 2021