Hidden Portraits: Reconsidering Gauguin and Picasso (In person)
Gauguin and Picasso are two of the biggest names in art history and two of the most controversial. Their influence could never be doubted or dismissed, but their lives and legacies are ripe for reappraisal. Now, award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux and bestselling art historian Dr Sue Roe, have done just that, considering the lives and loves of these titans of art as never before in their myth-busting new books.
In Wild Thing, Sue Prideaux re-examines the adventurous and complicated life of Paul Gauguin. She illuminates the lesser-known facts of his life and the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision: his privileged upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France; the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene; meeting Mette, the woman who he would marry; formative encounters with Vincent van Gogh and August Strindberg; and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia.
In Hidden Portraits, Sue Roe shines a spotlight on the lives of Fernande Olivier, Olga Khokhlova, Marie-Therese Walter, Dora Maar, Francoise Gilot, and Jacqueline Roque, six women who loved Picasso and were instrumental in his life and career, yet have often been dismissed as mere models or passive muses. All six were unconventional, independent and talented. And all six were severely tested, both by Picasso’s subterfuges and betrayals and the wider social turbulence they lived through. Sue Roe delves into the truth of their experiences for the first time, revealing lives that were – without exception – extraordinary and compelling.
In conversation with art historian Ben Street, Prideaux and Roe discuss the hidden lives they uncovered, why they matter and what we can learn from reconsidering the narratives of art history.
Sue Prideaux’s first biography Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream (2005) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Strindberg: A Life (2012) won the Duff Cooper Prize, and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche (2018) was awarded the Hawthornden Prize, longlisted for the Cundhill History Prize and Rathbones Folio Prize, shortlisted for the Historical Writers' Association Non-Fiction Crown and was The Times Biography of the Year.
Dr Sue Roe is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author, whose four previous narrative non-fiction books on art history have received wide acclaim. Most recently she published In Montparnasse: The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dali, (2018). She has also taught at universities, including from 2017-2020 at the University of Sussex as a Royal Literary Fund fellow.
Dr Ben Street is an art historian, author, lecturer and educator. He has published several books on art for general and younger readers, including How to Enjoy Art: A Guide for Everyone (2021) and How to be an Art Rebel (2021). He has written for numerous publications, including museum catalogues, monographs and magazines, has participated as an expert on TV and radio programmes for the BBC and has worked for institutions including The National Gallery, Tate, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Sue Prideaux’s Wild Thing, Sue Roe’s Hidden Portraits and books by Ben Street will be available to buy at the event and online from our partner bookshop Hatchards.
NB This event will take place in person at The London Library. Doors (and the bar) will open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Please see our Event Access Guidelines before you arrive.
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