When Harry Met Pablo

Description

When Harry Met Pablo
by Matthew Algeo

ISBN: 9781641607872
Hardcover, new

Brief Description:
Truman and Picasso were contemporaries and were both shaped by and shapers
of the great events of the twentieth century–the man who painted Guernica
and the man who authorized the use of atomic bombs against civilians. But
in most ways, they couldn’t have been more different. Picasso was a
communist, and probably the only thing Harry Truman hated more than
communists was modern art. Picasso was an indifferent father, a womanizer,
and a millionaire. Truman was utterly devoted to his family and, despite
his fame, far from a rich man. How did they come to be shaking hands in
front of Picasso’s studio in the South of France? Truman’s meeting with
Picasso was quietly arranged by Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director
of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and an early champion of Picasso. Barr
knew that if he could convince these two ideological antipodes, the
straight-talking politician from Missouri and the Cubist painter from
Málaga, to simply shake hands, it would send a powerful message, not just
to reactionary Republicans pushing McCarthyism at home, but to the whole
world: modern art was not evil. Truman author Matthew Algeo retraced the
Trumans’ Mediterranean vacation and visited the places they went with
Picasso, including Picasso’s villa, Picasso’s ceramics studio in Vallauris,
and Château Grimaldi, a museum in Antibes. A rigorous history with a
heartwarming center, When Harry Met Pablo intertwines the biographies of
Truman and Picasso, the history of modern art, and twentieth century
American politics–but at its core it is the touching story of two old men
who meet for the first time and realize they have more in common–and are
more alike–than they ever imagined.