Memoirs of a picture seller

By: Blanca Ripoll Sintes & Ambroise Vollard

Published by: Renacimiento

ISBN: 9788418818981

Softcover. 424 pages. 24 x 17 cm

Language: Spanish

In Memoirs of a Painting Salesman, Ambroise Vollard emerges as one of the privileged vantage points from which to contemplate live and direct the discovery, controversies and consolidation of the greatest painters and sculptors in the history of 20th century art: Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse, Gauguin and Picasso were vindicated by the young French gallery owner. Vollard recounts a multitude of anecdotes and scenes from a fascinating life, shared with a gallery of illustrious personalities who throb, in the flesh, between his pages. In addition to all his successes as an art dealer, he was also a publisher of books illustrated by artists and invited painters to try their hand at the technique of engraving. Vollard's Memoirs is, as Josep Pla said of its first edition in Spanish in 1946, translated by Rafael Vázquez Zamora, "a delight for the spirit"; a fresh read that takes us on a journey to a time whose aesthetic ferment set the pace for the artistic development of the whole of the last century. And beyond its historical value, it is undoubtedly a hilarious read, thanks to the narrator Vollard who, sardonic and ironic, conveys his unique viewpoint.