Picasso
Product Description [Audiobook CASSETTE Library Edition in vinyl case.] [Read by Nadia May] This landmark biography penetrates the barriers of legend to bring to full and intimate life a man whose burning passions--for painting, for women, for ideas--were matched by a compulsion to invent reality in his life no less than in his art. Here is the tragic story of a man who, from his teenage passion for a gypsy boy to the chilling bitterness and betrayals of his old age, was unable to love and was driven to dominate and humiliate the women--and the many men--who fell under his hypnotic spell. Drawing on a wealth of startling revelations, including the vivid memories of Picasso's daughter Maya and the heretofore untold recollections of Francoise Gilot, who shared his life for ten years and bore two of his children, the author has stripped bare the romantic myths to reveal, in all its volatile complexity, Picasso's lifelong struggle between his power to create and his compulsion to destroy. Review ''The reading is easy to listen to, well-dramatized, and the production values are good. The biography won't go out of style.'' --AudioFile About the Author ARIANNA STASSINOPOULOS HUFFINGTON is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. She is the author of the bestselling biography Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend and The Gods of Greece. She lives with her husband in Houston, Texas, and Santa Barbara, California. From AudioFile This biography dwells little on Picasso's art and focuses on his personal life, which was like a soap opera. Based on the recollections of one of Picasso's children and Francoise Gilot, his last "official" mistress and the mother of two of his children, it's not a sympathetic tale. The narrator does all of the voices in the same "French" accent; this goes for the Spaniards as well as the French. Still, the reading is easy to listen to, well-dramatized, and the production values are good. The biography won't go out of style, and listeners who like biography will like this one. E.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine