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A Life Of Picasso: The Minotaur Years: 1933-1943
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75/99
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About This Book
The spectacular fourth volume of Picasso's life set in Paris, Normandy, and Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and WWII. Based on original and exhaustive research from interviews and never-before-seen material in the Picasso family archives, Volume IV describes a wildly productive decade for Picasso: his ongoing involvement with the surrealists Man Ray, Dali, Paul Eluard and Andr� Breton on his Skira-backed magazine Minotaur; summers spent in the south of France at Juan-les-Pins and Mougins with the surrealists and their wives and girlfriends; the making of Minotauromachie; living in Nazi-occupied Paris, labeled a degenerate, prevented from exhibiting his work. During these years, Picasso, at long last, would legally separate from his wife Olga and their son Paulo would be sent to a Swiss clinic for therapy and rehab; Marie-Th�r�se would remain Picasso's mistress, but a stormy relationship with the photographer Dora Maar would be part of the mix, while Alice Paalen and Valentine Hugo would come and go. It is also the time in which Picasso would paint his masterwork, Guernica, unveiled at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. Richardson tells Picasso's story through the art of this period, analyzing how it reflects the tenor of the artist's day-to-day life. The fascinating, accessible narrative immerses the reader in one of the most exciting artistic moments in twentieth century cultural history, and makes a groundbreaking contribution to the scholarship of the field.
Reviews
"You expect a biographer to emphasize biographical readings."
"While the final chapters, which detail the end of Picasso's marriage, his survival through Nazi Occupation, and the creation of his major wartime work L'Aubade, feel less polished than earlier sections, they still provide plenty of insight."
"Because, unlike Richardson, he could use color illustrations on every page, his books offer a more concrete, graphic account of Picasso's progress."
"This granted him unique access to invaluable material, including diaries and magnetizing photographs, many documenting Picasso's key involvement with surrealist photographer Dora Maar ..."
"After Picasso, Dora Maar at least had God; Richardson's Picasso won't be so easy to replace."
"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; his personal relationships with other artists, writers, and women; and his work habits ..."
"[Richardson is] a fluent writer with a gift for narrative and a sensitive ability to read the artist's work in relation to his life ..."
"We follow Picasso's hot and cold affairs, his protean experimentation, the intrusion of world events into his field of vision."
"'Guernica,' the monumental canvas commissioned by the Spanish Republican government lamenting the bombing of the Basque town of the same name, is spared Richardson's disapproval—there were plenty of shortsighted contemporaries for that, Luis Buñuel and Anthony Blunt among them."
"The advantage is that Richardson and, by extension, we have intimate access to the painter not only at the easel but at home and at the bullfight and on the run from one lover to another, and on, and on ..."
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