A Life of Picasso

Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 vol 3

John Richardson

The third volume of Richardson’s magisterial Life of Picasso, a groundbreaking contribution to our understanding of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

Here is Picasso at the height of his powers in Rome and Naples, producing the sets and costumes with Cocteau for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and visiting Pompeii where the antique statuary fuel his obsession with classicism; in Paris, creating some of his most important sculpture and painting as part of a group that included Braque, Apollinaire, Miró, and Breton; spending summers in the South of France in the company of Gerald and Sara Murphy, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald.

These are the years of his marriage to the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova—the mother of his only legitimate child, Paulo—and of his passionate affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, who was, as well, his model and muse.

First published:: 2009
Published by:: Jonathan Cape
Length:: Hardcover 608 pages

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About the author

John Richardson is the author of a memoir, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters, an essay collection; he also writes for The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. In 1995–96 he served as the Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University. He divides his time between Connecticut and New York City.