Jean-Louis Andral

The Mediterranean coast of France and Catalonia witnessed the rise and development of modern art over a century, from Cézanne in the 1860s to Matisse, Picasso and Klein in the 1950s and 1960s. These artists and the many more featured here discovered an inexhaustible source of inspiration in this storied region, whose glittering, languid sea stretches out towards the far horizon beneath brilliant azure skies. Indelibly associated with the classical past, this magical land of eternal spring and spiritual renewal came to signify a state of mind, and avant-garde artists sought to convey the vitality and élan it inspired in them through new paradigms of modernist invention.

In 1933, Virginia Woolf wrote a biography of the poet Elisabeth Barret Browning, told in the first person by her cocker spaniel, Flush. In 1936, to write her memoirs, All the dogs of my life, Elisabeth von Arnim chose to tell the story of the 14 dogs that had accompanied her throughout her life. In 1957, the dachshund Lump arrived at the home of Pablo Picasso, whose life he shared until 1973. This book charts Picasso's intimate family life, with Jacqueline, Claude and Paloma, and with the animals that populate the villa La Californie, as well as his artistic life. Inspired by these references, this collection (whose title is a nod to Picasso and Lump) takes a look at the lives and works of the great artists and art lovers of the 20th and 21st centuries from the perspective of their relationship with the "dogs of their lives". These lighthearted, erudite books offer a unique approach to the life and work of Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Peggy Guggenheim and Yves Saint Laurent...