Picasso's Lovers

 

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You know Pablo Picasso. Now meet the women behind the masterpieces. The women of Picasso's life are glamorous and elusive, existing in the shadow of his fame - until, in the 1950's, aspiring journalist Alana Olsen determines to bring one into the light and discovers a past complicated by secrets and intrique.

Read an Excerpt

Gazes from Pablo Picasso are like brushstrokes. Some are long, lingering, full of texture and pigment. Some are short, shallow, even accidental. His gaze on me now falls somewhere between the two.

Once, his gaze would have found enough for an entire painting. He would have seen flesh, and the bone and muscle under the flesh, the question or certainty of the eyes. He would have seen past, present, and future and painted them in a way that made time irrelevant.

Yes, that was how he pained me. Everything and at once, all the angles and geometry of the body, and he made of me something eternal and always beautiful. That is what an artists can do for a woman. When most men looked at me, all I saw in their faces was desire, the urge to possess. When Pablo looked at me, his face filled with wonder waiting to be translated to lines and brushstrokes.

Spring. The second year of the Great War. I wasn’t twenty yet, and had returned from cold, starving Moscow, where a loaf of bread coast as much as a silk dress…Back to Paris for me!

When Pablo first saw me, I was sitting on the rim of the Wallace Fountain in Place Emile, face turned up to the sun like a basking cat, enjoying the fine day and wondering what adventure I might find…It was early summer. I had stolen a bunch of cherries at Les Halles and a roll, but my stomach rattled.

About the Author:

Jeanne Mackin is the author of several historical novels, including The Last Collection, which has been translated into five languages, and The Beautiful American, which won a CNY award for fiction. She has taught in the MFA Creative Writing program at Goddard College and won journalism awards, and is currently at work on her next novel.

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