A Life of Picasso IV: The Minotaur Years

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 André 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-Thérèse 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.