The innocent eye: children's art and the modern artist

"When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael. It took me many years to learn how to draw like these children."--Pablo Picasso. The notion that modern art resembles children's drawings is a long-standing cliché, yet for some modernists, this connection was explicit. This groundbreaking book focuses on modern masters like Klee, Kandinsky, Picasso, and Miró, presenting material from child art collections that influenced their greatest works. Jonathan Fineberg, the first art historian to delve into this connection, explores the significance of children's art for key modernists from Matisse to Pollock. The book juxtaposes modern masterpieces with children's drawings that directly inspired them. Fineberg discusses the impact of primitivism and Freudian thought on these artists, highlighting their appreciation for children's art due to its naive spontaneity, imaginative visual language, and universal candor. Each master’s reasons for collecting child art reflect their unique styles. Fineberg reveals major collections of child art assembled by celebrated modernists, with many examples reproduced for the first time. He examines how artists like Larionov, Kandinsky, Klee, and others utilized child art to achieve their artistic breakthroughs. With over 170 color plates and 140 black-and-white illustrations, this visually compelling work will inspire new research among art historians and encourage museum visitors to v