The Religious Art of Pablo Picasso

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The Religious Art of Pablo Picasso Details

Review "[Dillenberger] provides a fresh outlook that connects [Picasso] to the spiritual upbringing in his childhood and the classical past world of art." (Library Journal 2014-08-01)"... a powerful study... Dillenberger argues powerfully that Picasso, too, was in his best works searching to express the presence of transcendence in the here and now, seeking 'some other realm of feeling and thought where he, too, despite his profession of atheism, could take part in the Christian drama as it unfolded under his own hand'." (Charles Pickstone Art & Christianity Enquiry) Read more From the Inside Flap "Dillenberger and Handley have addressed a subject that until recently scholars have failed to investigate. Their new study is very welcome for the light it sheds on the Spanish darkness of Picasso’s religious beliefs. Dillenberger is an eminent theologian with a deep understanding of her faith, as well as an art historian, and together they endow their book with revealing new insights."―John Richardson, author of A Life of Picasso "Hundreds of books have been written about Picasso, but this is the first study of his religious art. Although an avowed atheist, Picasso created works which are spiritual, indeed transcendental in nature. Jane Dillenberger and John Handley begin their critical study with a discussion of Picasso's competent painting of a girl at her first Communion, done when he was fourteen years old, to his magnificent sculpture of the MAN WITH LAMB, created during World War II, and on to his his life-long occupation with the Crucifixion, and his great GUERNICA mural in which the artist conveyed universal suffering in a single horse's head. The book ends with a discussion of the Corrida where the bull is 'sacrificed' (from the Latin 'made holy') and the allusion to the Christ on the Cross."―Peter Selz, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley   Read more See all Editorial Reviews

Reviews

At age 98, the distinguished art historian, Jane Daggett Dillenberger, has joined John Handley in co-authoring this superb and surprising book about the religious works of Pablo Picasso. Who would have thought that Picasso, a self-proclaimed atheist, had such a deep and long-standing interest in Christianity?.

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