The Religious Art of Pablo Picasso

"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.