Pablo

by Julie Birmant, illustrations by Clement Oubrerie

(SelfMadeHero, £16.99)

AS THE creator of images which strip away layers of conventional perception to reveal the truth, Pablo Picasso remains a phenomenon in the history of modern art.

The origins of his artistic journey are the focus of Pablo, which begins with the impoverished and unknown Spaniard’s arrival in Paris in 1900 and narrates the seven years prior to Picasso’s momentous meeting with gallery owner Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler that was to change his life as well as those of many around him.

Pablo, the fourth and last volume in a sumptuous series of graphic novels, narrates the story of those years with an emphasis on the last three from the perspective of Fernande Olivier, at the time Picasso’s on-off lover and confidante.

The other three works, currently only available in French, deal with his relations with Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire and Henri Matisse. The writer, painter and critic Jacob and the poet Apollinaire were his inseparable friends at the time and their alcohol-fuelled bohemian escapades in and around a Montmartre brimming with artistic ferment are as entertaining as they are informative.

The painter Matisse was a different kettle of fish. His position as the unchallenged leader of the avant-garde irked Picasso, motivating his relentless search for ways to dethrone him.

In this quest, he found much support from the writer and art collector Gertrude Stein. Her salon — crammed with works by all the significant artists of the moment — was an important gathering place.Picasso rarely had two sous to rub together and Olivier supported them both with modelling work and teaching French to Stein and her lover Alice B Toklas and also by running drawing classes.

That impoverished period ended one day when the sceptical Kahnweiler, on the insistence of art critic Wilhelm Uhde, knocked reluctantly on the door of the shabby studio at the Bateau-Lavoir building in Montmartre and clapped eyes on the canvas Bordello — better know today as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon — which astounded him. Picasso had, at last, displaced Matisse.

That sequence typifies a free-flowing and engaging narrative that has drama in abundance — love, friendship, drunken brawls, parties, sex, falling-outs, misery, suicides and poetry. Oubrerie’s quasi-cinematic mise en scene is a delight, with changing “camera” angles, switches from intimate detail to wider perspectives, the superb rendition of mood through light changes and impressive character studies.

If you doubt that graphic novels can be hugely educational as well as entertaining, Pablo may be the one to change your mind.