1881-1906

A Life of Picasso Volume I

The first volume of John Richardson's extraordiinary biography of Picasso

Richardson, it hardly needs repeating, is steeped in Picasso and his life (his own friendship with Picasso is the tacit bedrock of this biography) but the arguments he makes are always precise and cogent, never blithely assertive.

John Richardson was born in London in 1924. He studied art at the Slade School but soon gave up painting for art criticism. In 1949 he moved to France, where he lived for the next twelve years, befriending Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Cocteau. In the early 1960s Richardson moved to New York, where he was appointed head of Christie's US operation, and eventually became a full-time writer and editor. He has published books on Manet and Braque and is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. The first volume of A Life of Picasso, covering the years 1881-1906, was published in 1991 and won the Whitbread Prize. The second volume of A Life of Picasso, covering the years 1907-1917, was published in 1996. 
 
In 1993 Richardson was made a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 1994-95 he served as the Slade Professor of Art at Oxford. Currently he divides his time between Connecticut and New York City, where is working on the fourth volume of A Life of Picasso

From 1950 to 1962, John Richardson lived near Picasso in France and was a friend of the artist. With a view to writing a biography, the acclaimed art historian kept a diary of their meetings. After Picasso's death, his widow Jacqueline collaborated in the preparation of this work, giving Richardson access to Picasso's studio and papers. 
 
Volume one of this extraordinary biography establishes the complexity of Picasso's Spanish roots; his aversion to his native Malaga and his passion for Barcelona and Catalan "modernisme". Richardson introduces new material on the artist's early training in religious art; re-examines old legends to provide fresh insights into the artistic failures of Picasso's father as an impetus to his sons's triumphs; and includes portraits of Apollinaire, Max Jacob and Gertrude Stein, who made up "The Picasso Gang" in Paris during the "Blue" and "Rose" periods.

1907 1917: The Painter of Modern Life

A Life of Picasso Volume II

The second volume of John Richardson's authoritative and bestselling biography of Picasso.

John Richardson's second volume on Picasso confirms what his first suggested: that this is a masterpiece in the making, the most illuminating biography yet written on a twentieth-century visual artist... A continuous pleasure to read

Magisterial...Richardson's ambitious project dwarfs all previous biographies of Picasso... [He] has a gift for telling pen-portraits and makes vivid an entire gallery of pioneering dealers and early collectors.

Richardson covers [the] momentous ten years from 1907 to the end of the First World War with great elegance and quiet authority... What makes the two published volumes so outstanding is the sense of Picasso the man emerging - in all his complexity - alongside the superb analysis of Picasso the artist

John Richardson has written books on Manet and Braque, and has been a contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. The first volume of his Life of Picasso won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1991. In 1993 he was made a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 1994 - 95 he served as the Slade Professor of Art at Oxford University. He lives between Conneticut and New York City.

John Richardson draws on the same combination of lively writing, critical astuteness, exhaustive research, and personal experience which made a bestseller out of the first volume and vividly recreates the artist's life and work during the crucial decade of 1907-17 - a period during which Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invented Cubism and to that extent engendered modernism. 
 
Richardson has had unique access to untapped sources and unpublished material. By harnessing biography to art history, he has managed to crack the code of cubism more successfully than any of his predecessors. And by bringing a fresh light to bear on the artist's often too sensationalised private life, he has succeeded in coming up with a totally new view of this paradoxical man of his paradoxical work. Never before has Picasso's prodigious technique, his incisive vision and not least his sardonic humour been analysed with such clarity.

The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932

A Life of Picasso Volume III

The magisterial third volume in John Richardson's prize-winning life of the great artist

The latest instalment of the finest artistic biography ever written

No man is better qualified to write the biography of Picasso...he writes with such fluency, simplicity and clarity that his knowledge and illuminating wisdom are very lightly borne... A marvellous book

'Christmas Biography Choice' Daily Telegraph

Every page provides some insightful and fascinating information

I love this tumultuous, mercurial, idiosyncratic cavalcade of a book... It is a book that manages to be simultaneously individual and authoritative, and makes one impatient for the next volume

The most striking aspect of this surefooted account is the link that Richardson shows between the women in Picasso's life and the direction of his art

Out of the detail the man Picasso emerges, as startling as a character in any good novel...it is glorious to read the story of an artist which does not make the sins count for more than the paintings, does not forget the life while theorising the paintings to dust. Richardson is writing the life of Picasso without ever forgetting the point of him

Richardson's argument, cogent, witty and persuasive, backed up by prodigious research and sumptuous illustrations, makes this herculean biography increasingly harsh, tough and uncomfortable to read

Gossipy, profound, insightful and non-judgmental, Richardson is terrific company.  This volume joins its predecessors as unrivalled among artists' biographies

Richardson, a magisterial writer, brilliant critic and deliriously funny raconteur, is a unique, dazzling match for his subject

A colossal undertaking that has taken almost his whole life and will enrich yours forever

John Richardson worked for Christie's in New York, has written books on Manet and Braque, and has been a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. The first volume of his Life of Picasso won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1991. In 1993 he was made a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 1994-95 he served as the Slade Professor of Art at Oxford University. He lives between Connecticut and New York City.

Drawing on exhaustive research from interviews and unpublished archival material, John Richardson has produced the long-awaited third volume of the definitive biography, full of original, groundbreaking new insights into Picasso's life and work. His lively and incisive analysis of the work meshes seamlessly with the rich and detailed narrative of this complex and sensual life. 
 
The Triumphant Years reveals Picasso at the height of his powers, producing not only the costumes and sets for such Diaghilev Ballets Russes productions as Parade and Tricorne but some of his most important sculpture and paintings. These are tumultuous years, Picasso torn between marital respectability with Olga, the Russian ballerina who was his first wife, and the erotic passion of his mistress, Marie-Therese. 
 
This extraordinary biography ends with the completion of a dramatic series of drawings of the crucifixion. From then on the horrors of war would replace any private horrors, leading ultimately to Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica.

John Richardson

Clever, amusing, flamboyant and outrageous... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpiece.

Richardson's monumental biography...comes at you like a roar... As biographer, Richardson is clever, amusing, flamboyant, outrageous - a worthy match for his subject... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpiece.

Magnificent, unparalleled... How [Volume IV] manages to be as gripping as it is, as fresh as it is, only the gods of art can answer... Richardson is both an intimate witness and a ravenous historian... No one will ever again be able to combine Richardson's personal familiarity with Picasso with such impressive levels of history, insight, detail, gossip and breezy writing. The greatest art biography ever written can never have a proper ending. It's an incomplete masterpiece. But a masterpiece nevertheless.

What a magnificent resource this four-volume biography is, unfinished...yet unrivalled in its blend of erudition and gossipy insights.

Magisterial... What has always made Richardson's biographical work on Picasso so alive is the fact of his personal friendship with the artist. It is thrilling to read a narrative in which scholarly prose is regularly interrupted with the phrase "Picasso once told me ... " followed by an entirely fresh anecdote... How lucky we are...that Richardson lived long enough to get this far.

One of the great biographical enterprises of our times.

New Statesman, *The Best Books of 2022 So Far*

No previous biographer of Picasso has commanded such detail, range and depth when dealing with this unendingly inventive and ferociously experimental artist. This fourth volume...reflects Richardson's gift for merging the personal with the professional.

Gripping, highly readable and thoughtfully illustrated... It's hard to imagine that he could be bettered as our guide in the labyrinth of the minotaur.

Enlivened by...anecdotal intimacy... Richardson...has ingeniously deciphered the art without demystifying the artist.

Every page carries an entertaining story or a fascinating gobbet of artistic gossip.

A fluent writer with a gift for narrative and a sensitive ability to read the artist's work in relation to his life... The decade covered in this volume, which turns on Picasso's identification with the part-beast, part-man mythical Minotaur, is a tumultuous one, both in public and in private life... [it is] deftly presented as Richardson moves from the man to his circle to his art to larger historical events.

Personal and political collide in lively fourth volume of detailed biography... The Minotaur Years retells what might be considered a familiar story, but carries it off with a liveliness generated by short chapters, sharp judgements and occasionally waspish dismissals, all dispatched at pace. It is the fruit of 60 years of thinking, conversing and speculating about the artist, underpinned by detailed looking, research and investigation of his movements moment by moment.

[Richardson] set the standard for modern artists' biographies...The fourth and final volume...is a worthy follow-up to its predecessors... just as rich, just as astounding.

The final chapter of a magisterial biography... The author's unique, extensive knowledge and insider information about Picasso - both the man and artist - informs insightful explications of the nuances and symbolism in Picasso's works... A masterful accomplishment.

Monumental... Nobody has brought us closer [than Richardson] to understanding this extraordinary and complex artist.

[A] magisterial work... superbly illustrated.

[A] magisterial and superbly illustrated biography.

Monumental... This uncompleted project will surely be the Ozymandias of all biographies, since Richardson's talents were uniquely matched to his protean subject.

Wonderfully lively, greatly informative and memorably insightful... a great read.

The Minotaur Years: 1933–1943

'A masterpiece' Sunday Times 
 
'Magisterial... thrilling' Guardian 
 
'Terrifically enjoyable' Daily Telegraph 
 
The beautifully illustrated, long-awaited final volume of John Richardson's magisterial Life of Picasso, drawing on original research from interviews and never-before-seen material in the Picasso family archives. 
 
 The Minotaur Years opens in 1933 with a visit by the Hungarian-French photographer Brassaï to Picasso's château in Normandy, Boisgeloup, where he would take his iconic photographs of the celebrated plaster busts of Picasso's lover Marie-Thérèse Walter. Picasso was contributing to André Breton's Minotaur magazine and spending time with the likes of Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, Lee Miller, and the poet Paul Éluard, in Paris and the south of France. It was during this time that Picasso began writing surrealist poetry and became obsessed with the image of himself as the mythic Minotaur. 
 
 Richardson shows us the artist being as prolific as ever, painting Walter, as well as the surrealist photographer Dora Maar, who became a muse, collaborator and lover. The bombing of Guernica in April 1937 would inspire Picasso's vast masterwork of the same name, which he painted in just a few weeks for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris World's Fair. When the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940, Picasso chose to remain in the city despite the threat that his art would be confiscated. In 1943, Picasso met Françoise Gilot who would replace Maar and inspire a brilliant new sequence of paintings. 
 
 As always, Richardson tells Picasso's story through his work, analysing how it shows what the artist was feeling and thinking. His fascinating and illuminating narrative immerses us in one of the most exciting moments in twentieth-century cultural history, and brings to a close the definitive and critically acclaimed biography of one of the world's most celebrated artists.

John Richardson

Praise for A Life of Picasso Volume IV

Clever, amusing, flamboyant and outrageous... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpiece.

Clever, amusing, flamboyant and outrageous... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpiece.

Richardson's monumental biography...comes at you like a roar... As biographer, Richardson is clever, amusing, flamboyant, outrageous - a worthy match for his subject... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpi ...

Clever, amusing, flamboyant and outrageous... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpiece.

Clever, amusing, flamboyant and outrageous... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpiece.

Richardson's monumental biography...comes at you like a roar... As biographer, Richardson is clever, amusing, flamboyant, outrageous - a worthy match for his subject... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpi ...

Clever, amusing, flamboyant and outrageous... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpiece.

Clever, amusing, flamboyant and outrageous... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpiece.

Richardson's monumental biography...comes at you like a roar... As biographer, Richardson is clever, amusing, flamboyant, outrageous - a worthy match for his subject... Even incomplete, this is Richardson's masterpi ...

Books by John Richardson

Series by John Richardson

Life of Picasso

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