Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901 (Courtauld Gallery) - Softcover

The narrative is one of the most exciting stories that can be told about the life of any major artist - that of breakthrough. Once again, the Courtauld Gallery has excelled itself by mounting a tight, compelling, and beautifully installed exhibition, full of first-class works of art borrowed from important institutions around the world. Don t miss it. --THE TELEGRAPH, 19 February 2013

Becoming Picasso deals with a single year in its subject's life, 1901 - the moment when he launched himself with an exhibition at the gallery of Ambroise Vollard, champion of Cezanne, protector of Gauguin, promoter of Vincent van Gogh. Picasso was 19 when the show opened in June. He was other things as well: classically trained, Spanish, 19th century. Above all, becoming Picasso meant coming to Paris - being a Parisian painter but also not, stealing just enough from Degas and Manet to build a French Trojan horse for his own Spanish genius.In fewer than 20 works, the Courtauld tells a story that leaves you aching for the next installment, to know those other, later Picassos. It is a customarily brilliant show. --THE INDEPENDENT, 17 February 2013

This is a formidable exhibition, didactic, intense and moving. The ground is not new, but the particularly sharp focus on it is. The quality of the exhibits is uneven, but this reflects the madcap pace of a year in which we know Picasso painted some 120 oil paintings and many others lost, destroyed or painted over, to say nothing of pastels and drawings; the quality of the best is astonishing, even sublime. --Brian Sewell, The Evening Standard, 21 February 2013

Barnaby Wright is The Courtauld's Daniel Katz Curator of 20th Century Art.