A01=Annie Cohen-Solal
art
art history
artists life
Author_Annie Cohen-Solal
Category=AGB
Category=DNB
Category=DNBG
cubism
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
european artists
expressionism
french history
painters
painting
paris
picasso
post impressionism
spanish artist
surrealism
women authors
world war two
wwii
Product details
- ISBN 9781250321862
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 135 x 208mm
- Publication Date: 16 Mar 2026
- Publisher: St Martin's Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Soon after his arrival in 1901, he was flagged as an anarchist by the security services—the first of many entries in an extensive case file. Though he became increasingly wealthy as his reputation grew worldwide, Picasso’s art was largely excluded from public collections in France for the next four decades. The genius who conceived Guernica in 1937 as a visceral statement against fascism was even denied French citizenship three years later, on the eve of the Nazi occupation. In France, Picasso faced a triple stigma—as a foreigner, a political radical, and an avant-garde artist.
Picasso the Foreigner approaches the artist from an entirely new angle, making use of long-overlooked archival sources. In this groundbreaking narrative, Picasso emerges as an artist who ignored national modes in favor of contemporary cosmopolitan forms. Annie Cohen-Solal reveals how Picasso strategized and fought to preserve his agency, eventually leaving Paris for good in 1955. He chose the south over the north and craftspeople over academicians, while simultaneously achieving widespread fame. The artist never became a citizen of France, yet he dynamized the country’s culture like few other figures in its history. This book, for the first time, explains how.
Annie Cohen-Solal, a writer and social historian, is Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. After earning her PhD from the Sorbonne, she taught at universities in Berlin, Jerusalem, New York, and Paris, and has served as the cultural counselor to the French embassy in the United States. Her books include biographies of Jean-Paul Sartre, Leo Castelli, and Mark Rothko, all of which have been widely translated. Picasso the Foreigner was awarded the 2021 Prix Femina Essai; an exhibition curated by Cohen-Solal and based on the research for this book appeared in Paris at the Museum of the History of Immigration, in partnership with the Musée National Picasso-Paris, in 2021.
Sam Taylor is an award-winning literary translator and novelist. His four novels have been published in ten languages, and he has translated more than sixty books from the French, including Laurent Binet's HHhH, Leila Slimani's The Perfect Nanny, and Marcel Proust's The Seventy-Five Folios. He grew up in England, spent a decade in France, and now lives in the United States.
