Notes

Newspaper clippings and correspondence included.

Walter Battiss met Pablo Picasso on his first trip to Paris. He had just published The Artists of the Rocks, and gave a copy of the book to Picasso, who reciprocated by giving Battiss a lithographic print, Bull X – from the famous series of eleven reduction states of the image of a bull – inscribed with the message: ‘Pour Walter Battiss en Souvenir du Picasso Paris 3 June 1949’. Battiss acquired many books on Picasso in his lifetime, and generously inscribed them with comments and corrections. One such book dealt with the last Picasso drawings, published in 1969, shortly before Picasso’s death. Battiss altered the book substantially, drawing on virtually every page, and, teeming with faces, figures and feet, turning it into a veritable artist’s book in conversation with the Picasso drawings.