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A Life of Picasso #4
A Life Of Picasso: The Minotaur Years: 1933-1943
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.
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.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2021
21 people are currently reading
345 people want to read
About the author
John Richardson
38 books63 followersSir John Patrick Richardson, KBE, was a British art historian and Picasso biographer. The elder son of Sir Wodehouse Richardson, he was sent to board at two successive schools after his father's death in 1929. When he was thirteen he became a boarder at Stowe school, where he admired the architecture and landscape and was taught something about the work of Picasso and other innovative painters. After bring invalided out of the army in the Second World War, he worked in London as an industrial designer and became friends with the painters Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.
In 1949 Richardson met the art historian and collector Douglas Cooper and the two began a relationship that would last ten years. In 1952, he moved with Cooper to Provence, where he met a number of artists, including Pablo Picasso. In 1960, Richardson left Cooper and moved to New York, where he worked in the art world until retiring in 1980 to concentrate full time on writing. The first volume of his biography of Picasso was published in 1991, with subsequent volumes published in 1996 and 2007. In 2012, Richardson was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for his services to art.
Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
In 1949 Richardson met the art historian and collector Douglas Cooper and the two began a relationship that would last ten years. In 1952, he moved with Cooper to Provence, where he met a number of artists, including Pablo Picasso. In 1960, Richardson left Cooper and moved to New York, where he worked in the art world until retiring in 1980 to concentrate full time on writing. The first volume of his biography of Picasso was published in 1991, with subsequent volumes published in 1996 and 2007. In 2012, Richardson was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for his services to art.
Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 12, 2025
By the time I reached The Minotaur Years, I was a jaundiced monk in the monastery of Picasso. Weeks of confinement had already carried me through his bohemian chaos, Cubist revolution, and triumphant neoclassical phase. Now, with my skin still yellow enough to match the dust jackets, I entered the dark labyrinth of 1933 to 1943—years shadowed by politics, betrayal, and war, with the Minotaur lurking at every turn.
Richardson wastes no time framing this period as Picasso’s self-mythologizing apex. The Minotaur—half man, half beast, half metaphor—stalks his art and private life. It’s the perfect image for a man both predator and victim, both master and prisoner of his own appetites. In my feverish confinement, the symbolism felt personal: I too was trapped, circling the same four walls, battling my own condition, though without the added complication of multiple mistresses and looming fascism.
The decade begins with his affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, his golden-haired muse, and his increasingly bitter estrangement from Olga. Picasso paints with the intensity of someone who knows the world is tilting toward catastrophe. Richardson moves deftly between the personal and the political—the rise of Franco, the Spanish Civil War, the horror of Guernica—without ever losing sight of the man in the studio. Guernica gets the attention it deserves here: not just as a masterpiece of protest art, but as a culmination of years of symbolic and formal experimentation.
What’s striking is how Richardson resists hagiography. He gives us Picasso as the Minotaur, yes, but also as the small, petty, insecure man—capable of cruelty toward lovers and manipulative toward friends. By this point, I’d spent so long with Picasso (and in bed) that these flaws felt almost intimate, like gossip about a relative.
The wartime years are especially claustrophobic. Paris under Nazi occupation, Picasso in his studio refusing to leave, painting skulls and still lifes like coded resistance. Richardson captures the surreal normalcy of it all: dinner parties under blackout conditions, whispered political conversations, and a city holding its breath.
When I closed this final volume, I felt a strange emptiness. I had followed Picasso from a prodigy in Málaga to an international icon in a besieged Paris, and I’d done it all without leaving my bed.
My jaundice would fade; his Minotaur years would pass into history. But for a few feverish weeks in 2013, both of us were trapped in our own labyrinths, sketching our way toward whatever came next.
Richardson wastes no time framing this period as Picasso’s self-mythologizing apex. The Minotaur—half man, half beast, half metaphor—stalks his art and private life. It’s the perfect image for a man both predator and victim, both master and prisoner of his own appetites. In my feverish confinement, the symbolism felt personal: I too was trapped, circling the same four walls, battling my own condition, though without the added complication of multiple mistresses and looming fascism.
The decade begins with his affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, his golden-haired muse, and his increasingly bitter estrangement from Olga. Picasso paints with the intensity of someone who knows the world is tilting toward catastrophe. Richardson moves deftly between the personal and the political—the rise of Franco, the Spanish Civil War, the horror of Guernica—without ever losing sight of the man in the studio. Guernica gets the attention it deserves here: not just as a masterpiece of protest art, but as a culmination of years of symbolic and formal experimentation.
What’s striking is how Richardson resists hagiography. He gives us Picasso as the Minotaur, yes, but also as the small, petty, insecure man—capable of cruelty toward lovers and manipulative toward friends. By this point, I’d spent so long with Picasso (and in bed) that these flaws felt almost intimate, like gossip about a relative.
The wartime years are especially claustrophobic. Paris under Nazi occupation, Picasso in his studio refusing to leave, painting skulls and still lifes like coded resistance. Richardson captures the surreal normalcy of it all: dinner parties under blackout conditions, whispered political conversations, and a city holding its breath.
When I closed this final volume, I felt a strange emptiness. I had followed Picasso from a prodigy in Málaga to an international icon in a besieged Paris, and I’d done it all without leaving my bed.
My jaundice would fade; his Minotaur years would pass into history. But for a few feverish weeks in 2013, both of us were trapped in our own labyrinths, sketching our way toward whatever came next.
December 28, 2021
Richardson’s unfinished life of Picasso shines a bright, loving, Mithraic light on the twentieth century’s most restless, brilliant, mischievous, metamorphic artist. One comes to love and execrate the painter as he runs through styles, women, historical turning points, all the while without blinking those huge, penetrating, retentive, scornful eyes.
The fourth volume falls a bit short. Richardson’s evaluation of Picasso’s poetry, which he lauds as more avant-garde than Stein’s writing, fails to convince. His reasoning sometimes falls into paradox. And the repetitions (see his comments on Dora Maar’s “Père Ubu” photograph) can be wearying.
But as always he brilliantly weaves the artist’s Dionysiac temper into his times, exposes difficult truths (see him on PP’s treatment of his mother, of Olga, of Dora) while insisting on Picasso’s resolute loyalty to male friends.
I found Richardson excellent on the content of the art, but often blind to formal aspects that, while they must be secondary to a biographer, deserved fuller treatment. And, as too often in art history, connections hypothesized between the art and the work of earlier artsists did not convince. Occam rules.
The fourth volume falls a bit short. Richardson’s evaluation of Picasso’s poetry, which he lauds as more avant-garde than Stein’s writing, fails to convince. His reasoning sometimes falls into paradox. And the repetitions (see his comments on Dora Maar’s “Père Ubu” photograph) can be wearying.
But as always he brilliantly weaves the artist’s Dionysiac temper into his times, exposes difficult truths (see him on PP’s treatment of his mother, of Olga, of Dora) while insisting on Picasso’s resolute loyalty to male friends.
I found Richardson excellent on the content of the art, but often blind to formal aspects that, while they must be secondary to a biographer, deserved fuller treatment. And, as too often in art history, connections hypothesized between the art and the work of earlier artsists did not convince. Occam rules.
January 15, 2022
My husband gave me "A Life of Picasso: The Minotaur Years 1933-42" for my birthday, the fourth volume in the comprehensive set by John Richardson that was clearly meant to go one more book. Richardson died in 2019 and the manuscript was completed and polished by Ross Finocchio and Delphine Huisinga. You can hear it in the text. The bombastic, "I am always right" tone of the first three volumes is quieted. The voice is more third person than personal narrative. The prose reads smoothly and, in fact, this volume was a comparatively speedy read.
And a truly excellent one. A better one, in fact, than its three predecessors.
Picasso's later work, certainly from 1930 to his death in 1973, is some of the most maligned by critics and difficult to teach in the classroom. What style might you call it? Is Picasso truly a Surrealist? Has he only become a parody of his youthful self? Certainly many have regarded everything that followed his work of the early 1920s as being of little interest.
Yet this period, largely ignored in modern art history classes because we are too busy looking at Surrealism and the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in New York City, is little traveled territory. I have my own thoughts about the extent to which Picasso was a Surrealist or whether there is true creative vitality in this period (no to the former, yes to the latter) but I confess not not having organized my thoughts into any useful order. The fact that in the previous months I had read the first volume of William Feaver's weighty opus (see review on my page) and the biography of Francis Bacon by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swann (see review also on my page) and I have been thinking about the nature of modern art in Europe in the period between the wars. "The Minotaur Years" is a wonderful addition to the bibliography.
It is a well organized books, with excellent illustrations, both in black-and-white throughout the text and color plates in the center. IMO, one needn't bone up on early Picasso in order to enjoy this book. It helps to know a little something, certainly, but it isn't necessary.
A very nice start to the year.
And a truly excellent one. A better one, in fact, than its three predecessors.
Picasso's later work, certainly from 1930 to his death in 1973, is some of the most maligned by critics and difficult to teach in the classroom. What style might you call it? Is Picasso truly a Surrealist? Has he only become a parody of his youthful self? Certainly many have regarded everything that followed his work of the early 1920s as being of little interest.
Yet this period, largely ignored in modern art history classes because we are too busy looking at Surrealism and the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in New York City, is little traveled territory. I have my own thoughts about the extent to which Picasso was a Surrealist or whether there is true creative vitality in this period (no to the former, yes to the latter) but I confess not not having organized my thoughts into any useful order. The fact that in the previous months I had read the first volume of William Feaver's weighty opus (see review on my page) and the biography of Francis Bacon by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swann (see review also on my page) and I have been thinking about the nature of modern art in Europe in the period between the wars. "The Minotaur Years" is a wonderful addition to the bibliography.
It is a well organized books, with excellent illustrations, both in black-and-white throughout the text and color plates in the center. IMO, one needn't bone up on early Picasso in order to enjoy this book. It helps to know a little something, certainly, but it isn't necessary.
A very nice start to the year.
January 16, 2022
Picasso biography during his political awakening 1933-43
This is Volume 4 of Richardson’s biography. Integrates his life and work into a solid narrative. Guernica, the Spanish Civil War, and the German occupation of Paris. An interesting view of life’s impact on his work.
This is Volume 4 of Richardson’s biography. Integrates his life and work into a solid narrative. Guernica, the Spanish Civil War, and the German occupation of Paris. An interesting view of life’s impact on his work.
January 16, 2022
This was the shortest, and breeziest of the 4 volumes, and very clearly reflected the fact that Richardson, in his 90's, ran out of time. And possibly lost a bit of his art-historical edge as well. Its about half the size of the previous books, and never pauses its brisk pacing long enough to dig into any of the monumental developments that clearly rocked Picasso during the leadup to WW2 and his survival throughout in a hostile Vichy France. Marie Therese is ever present, but only in a sketchy, phantom-like way, and then she disappears without really any explanation. I could go on with examples like this, but in short, the book, for me, is a documentation of gaps and a framework for what could have been. It's certainly not bad or uninformative, and I am so happy that the notes or drafts that he left have been so nicely edited together and polished into a structure that is so readable... pleasantly readable. But we know that the details of Picasso's life and work during these 'Minotaur Years' was anything but pleasant or neatly summarized. But what a monumental achievement the 4 volumes are as a whole. Just fantastic.
December 30, 2021
John Richardson is always very enjoyable company. Knowleadgeable but also very down to earth, very humane. This last installment was a little bit undercooked at times. As I recall Richardson never intended to follow Picasso's complete life span but the book never explains why it stopped at 1943. What an accomplishment these 4 volumes are though. Bittersweet to finish this book but what an experience to follow this series since the 90's.
April 9, 2022
Loved it (this fourth volume) as much as the first two volumes. I'm not sure why I didn't like the third. But this was a perfect balance of history, his social & love life, and analysis of his art.
February 27, 2022
The last volume of the biography of Picasso that Richardson worked on before his death. Covers his deteriorating marriage with Olga, his longstanding relationship with the undemanding Marie-Therese and his relationship with the complicated, intellectually and artistically compatible, emotionally intense Dora Maar; his friendships and socializing with a number of the surrealists; his strong political support of Spaniards against Franco, the fascists and Nazi's; the creation of Guernica for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 Paris World's Fair in response to the Nazi bombing of the Basque town, and the minimal reception that extraordinary painting received at the event--a big surprise to me, as I was always drawn to the painting while it was at the Museum of Modern Art prior to its return to Spain. I had not known much about Olga, and was very sad to learn of her deep unhappiness and emotional destruction. Also very sad to learn about the devastating effect of their split lives on their son Paulo as he grew up--Picasso's painting of him as a little boy in a harlequin outfit is one of my favorites. From descriptions of his frenetic art-making, it seemed to me that he could be careless with materials and dash off lots of second-rate compositions because his signature guaranteed monetary value. The book reproduces a number of exquisite pencil portraits, including a delectable image of Maya, his daughter with Marie-Therese aged three months. I read a library copy, but will purchase the book to complete my set.
December 17, 2021
Dit is het laatste deel in deze serie over ht leven van Picasso, omdat de schrijver in 2019 is overleden. Dit is dan zijn vierde boek, handelend over de z.g. Minotaurperiode, van 1933 tot 1942. Net als de eerste drie boeken goed geschreven en heel informatief. en gelukkig ook veel illustraties. De persoon Picasso is niet bepaald sympathiek, ook weer in dit boek, maar zijn werk is prachtig. Dat laatste zeker na alle duiding door Richardson. Het heet de Minotaur jaren, omdathet beeld van de Minotaur met een zekere regelmaat terugkomt in Picasso's werk van deze periode. Het belangrijkste is natuurlijk het tot stand komen van Guernica. Verder natuurlijk veel over de Spaanse Burgeroorlog en het begin van de 2de wereldoorlog in Frankrijk.
February 15, 2023
Another excellent volume in Richardson's Picasso biography. I appreciate how he blends facts, antidotes, and observations about Picasso's artwork in a brisk narrative. He doesn't get too bogged down in details while giving important events the space they need to thrive. My only objection about this book is that it felt too brief: It ended in 1943 as WWII was still raging and affecting everything about Picasso's life. I understand the choice - Picasso's art was about to change as he changed mistresses from Dora Marr to Francoise Gilot (as Richardson puts it, "Picasso's love for [Gilot], and hers for him, would be that of master and pupil rather than master and slave.") With Richardson's death I'm bummed that this will be the last volume.
April 10, 2022
Not as good as the first three volumes. It ends with Picasso meeting Francois Gilot. Why? He continued to do important work after that. Maybe it was Richardson's intent to only depict the artist during his strongest years, to omit the later decline (though it wasn't much of a decline). Or maybe Richardson intended to write more but died before he could? The editors could have provided an explanatory note. Anyway, if you've read the first three volumes, you kind of have to read this one, even if it is disappointing.
January 18, 2024
Picasso is pretty much Picasso throughout the four volumes...active, always meeting interesting people, destructively selfish towards others...and so my interest level would rise and fall based on external events more than anything to do with Picasso. The most interesting piece was how art made its way from Picasso, Matisse, Braque and others to the world, and how this was disrupted by WWI and WWII - the art dealers who were robbed emerge as some of the most interesting and sympathetic characters in the four volumes.
October 28, 2022
What a let down. After three classic volumes, Richardson spent over a decade writing this measly thing. 250 pages, mostly pictures, mostly historical exposition. It doesn't help that the period covers Picasso at his most insufferable: writing awful poems, preaching communism and driven hysterical from daily newspapers.
April 7, 2022
The author does a great job of discussing Picasso’s life through the work he created during this 10 year period. This makes sense. However, Picasso’s life was an interesting one, and there were so many pieces he created during this period, the constant introduction of his work throughout the narrative tends to distract from the flow of the book.
An interesting read, but tedious.
An interesting read, but tedious.
February 25, 2022
hungry for more
As intelligent and pleasurable to read as it’s predecessors.
I love the stories of bright vacations in the south of France and feel the weight of the dark times during German occupation.
I would’ve loved to get Richardson’s personal account of the post war Picasso when he met him in person but sadly that won’t be possible anymore.
A powerful read.
As intelligent and pleasurable to read as it’s predecessors.
I love the stories of bright vacations in the south of France and feel the weight of the dark times during German occupation.
I would’ve loved to get Richardson’s personal account of the post war Picasso when he met him in person but sadly that won’t be possible anymore.
A powerful read.
March 23, 2022
I’ve been following this wonderful series for thirty years, and deeply regret its premature end- we’ll never have another portrait of Picasso like this.
June 17, 2022
Recommended. I plan to follow up with the other volumes of the biography. Enlightening.
October 16, 2023
Plaudertasche Richardson fast noch einmal in Hochform. Ausführliche Meinung hier: https://hansblog.de/biografie-kritik-...
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews