On his death Picasso left some 175 sketchbooks spanning over 60 years, their pages filled with drawings which were largely unknown even to close friends and scholars. This text presents a record of the day-to-day working life of the artist, and deals directly or indirectly with almost every phase of Picasso's career. Individual leaves as well as six sketchbooks are shown in full and in sequence, and six essays by art historians (Claude Picasso, E.A. Carmean, Robert Rosenblum, Theodore Reff, Rosalind E. Krauss, Sam Hunter, Gert Schiff and Francoise Gilot) each relate to a single sketchbook on the essayist's field of expertise.