Picasso’s lifelong friendship and collaboration with Christian Zervos, the founder of Cahiers d’Art, began in 1926 and continued until Zervos’ death in 1970.

Their relationship started with the second issue of the Revue Cahiers d’Art. In 1929, only three years after their first meeting, Zervos conceived the idea of creating a Catalogue Raisonné. In 1932, Cahiers d’Art published the first volume of the Picasso Catalogue Raisonné. This monumental undertaking became Zervos’s life’s work and remains one of the most influential scholarly achievements on the twentieth century’s most renowned artist. Zervos and Picasso’s joint legacy is now known simply as The Zervos, encompassing over 16,000 artworks. This historic 33-volume set is once again available — the original catalogue, with updates from the Picasso Administration, is now published in French and, for the first time, in English.

Zervos also organised one of Picasso’s major exhibitions in 1947 at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, which gave rise to what would later become the Festival d’Avignon. Another exhibition followed in 1970, also in Avignon. At Cahiers d’Art, Zervos curated several other Picasso exhibitions, including one dedicated to his painted figures and another in 1964 focused on his lithographs.

Cahiers d’Art also published several important works devoted to Picasso — notably the 1926 volume written by Zervos, which marked the beginning of their collaboration and featured a head etching created by Picasso himself. Another significant publication, La Barre d’Appui, included texts by André Breton and four of Picasso’s aquatints, one of which bears the artist’s imprint.

Picasso was, if not the first, certainly one of the most significant artists in the history of Cahiers d’Art. His career was profoundly shaped by the constant support of Christian Zervos, his lifelong friend. Picasso appeared in more than 90 issues of Cahiers d’Art. The 1935 issue featured an original cover by the artist, while the post-war issue of 1945 included a drypoint, printed in colour only four years later due to post-war paper shortages. As if closing the circle, the final article on Picasso appeared in 1960, in the last issue of Cahiers d’Art.

In 2015, publisher Staffan Ahrenberg released a new issue dedicated to Picasso, entitled Picasso: In the Studio. This special edition of the Revue presents rare and previously unpublished photographs of the artist at work, offering a rich and intimate insight into his creative process and gesture.