Volume 38, Number 6 · March 28, 1991
Invader
By Jack Flam
A Life of Picasso Volume 1: 1881–1906
by John Richardson, with the collaboration of Marilyn McCully
Random House, 548 pp., $39.95
No artist is better known, or has been written about more or in greater detail, than Pablo Picasso. Hardly a year passes without some major book or exhibition being devoted to him. Hence all the pitfalls that await biographers of artists—particularly the need to move back and forth from the life to the works—are greatly magnified for anyone courageous or foolhardy enough to tackle a full-scale biography of Picasso. John Richardson's A Life of Picasso, the first of a projected four volumes, deals with Picasso's life from his birth in 1881 until the time that he prepared the canvas on which he would paint Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. In it Richardson has managed to confront many of the problems inherent in such an undertaking and to produce an account of the artist's first twentyfive years that is so absorbing and stimulating, so detailed and so evenhanded, that it should remain the standard biography for many years to come.
Review, 5143 words
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