Customer Reviews

Pablo Picasso: The Lithographs

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This is an imperfect book but an essential one. It is both a Catalogue Raisonne of the lithographic works of Pablo Picasso, and a catalogue of the prints in the collection of the Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Munster which holds the most complete (although not quite complete) collection of Picasso lithographs in the world.
A lot of painstaking work has gone into compiling and documenting these 'leaves' as the editors call them into a unitary source. For the editors not only concerned themselves with cataloging heretofore undocumented images, and correlating Mourlot and Rau numbers to their own numbering system they also assigned prospective numbers to images that are known but not owned by the museum.
In addition the editors included as much relevant information not only about the edition, paper, plate size, etc. but also of characteristics of the individual prints included in the books such as penned notations, etc. even down to locating where it occurs on the sheet.
The folio-sized book in 304 pps with 870 color illustrations was printed and bound in Germany to the highest quality standards so that one feels as though he is holding a work of art in itself when he is leafing through the volume and to say that it is lavishly illustrated would not be exaggeration. This book should be owned by anyone interested in Picasso's prints or who takes an interest in his entire oevre; and it is essential to any collector of his lithographs.
One day this book will be even more scarce than it is today so I recommend owning it now rather than having to pay much more for it in a few years.
Four stars only because I still can't figure out, exactly, the numbering system.