Description

“The inspiration of nearly all his work comes from his daily life,” the acclaimed Picasso biographer John Richardson wrote of the artist in 1962. This was nowhere more true than in Picasso’s portraits of women. This volume traces the artist’s depictions of eight women who played a prominent role in the artist’s life and art: Fernande Olivier, Olga Khokhlova Picasso, Sara Murphy, Marie-Therese Walter, Dora Maar, Francoise Gilot, Sylvette David, and Jacqueline Roque Picasso. Each woman served as a catalyst for experiments in colour and form that would continue to change as the contours of the relationship shifted. It is through this process that Picasso’s work was constantly reinvented and renewed.

Published in association with an exhibition organised in honour of the late art historian and biographer, this book features reproductions of thirty-six paintings and sculptures; an extensive two-part newspaper article by Richardson written in 1962, “Picasso in Private”; and an illustrated chronology of the extraordinary exhibitions of Picasso’s work curated by Richardson at Gagosian between 2009 and 2018.