Even people with very little knowledge of art know the name of Picasso. As this author observes, Picasso’s career spanned the entire course of modern art, first joining it, then leading it.

Picasso’s personality, Wertenbaker avers, “was as many-faceted as his achievements.” Indeed, that’s what makes this illustrated biography so interesting.

Picasso was born in 1881 in Spain and lived to be 91. It was said he could draw before he could talk. His father recognized that his son was a prodigy, and both encouraged and disciplined him. By the time he was 14, he was a competent painter.

At 19, Picasso left home in search of new artistic frontiers, and before he was 25, the author tells us, “he had wrought his great natural abilities into a powerful, personal style - the first that could unmistakably be called ‘Picasso.’”

Numerous full-color plates in chronological order fill the book showing the changes in Picasso’s life and thus in his art. But he had some enduring themes - women, mothers with children, his home, and the history of art itself.

A chart at the end of the book shows other artists whose lives and work intersected with Picasso’s.

This volume of the Time-Life Library of Art makes a great introduction to the artist. ( )

the best book in this series ( )