Picasso and his Dogs

In 1933, Virginia Woolf wrote a biography of the poet Elisabeth Barret Browning, narrated in the first person by her cocker spaniel, Flush. In 1936, to write her memoir, All the Dogs of my Life, Elisabeth von Arnim chose to recount the lives of the 14 dogs who accompanied her, from her childhood in Prussia at the end of the 19th century to her retirement on the côte d’Azur. In 1957, the dachshund Lump arrived at Pablo Picasso's house; the dog shared his life until 1973. This book presents Picasso's intimate, family life, with Jacqueline, Claude and Paloma, with the animals that inhabited the villa La Californie, and also his artistic life around the Meninas of Velasquez. David Douglas Duncan, the friend who gave Lump to Picasso, brings together the testimonies of this shared life in Picasso and Lump: A Dachshund's Odyssey.

Inspired by these references, this new collection (whose title is a nod to Picasso and Lump) offers a look at the life and work of great artists and art lovers of the 20th and 21st centuries under the angle of the relationship with the “dogs in their lives”. Erudite and light works, entrusted to the best specialists, mix testimonies and stories, quotes, archive photographs and reproductions of works. These books invite a singular approach between sensitivity and humor, presenting the life and work of Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell, Andy Warhol, Francis Picabia, Pierre Bonnard, David Hockney, William Wegman, Gertrude Stein, Peggy Guggenheim and Yves Saint Laurent.

AUTHORS
Jean-Louis Andral, a painter specialist, has been director of the Picasso Museum in Antibes since 2008.
Martin Bethenod has held numerous positions in the field of culture and contemporary art. He has been president of Crédac–Centre d’art contemporain in Ivry since 2013, and is also president of the Archives de la Critique d’Art.

Text in French only