Published in 2021, The Minotaur Years 1933-1943, is the final volume in the biographical series A Life of Picasso by John Richardson, British art historian and Picasso specialist, which presents the life and work of the Malaga-born artist during a decade fraught with tensions and artistic evolution. It is the last in the series, published after the author's death in 2019, completed by his assistants and his publisher.
The choice of the title, The Minotaur Years, alludes to the engravings that Picasso dedicated to Greek mythology, symbolizing human and animal duality as an expression of desire, aggression or guilt. This period represents a time of chiaroscuro for Picasso, where the figure of the Minotaur becomes a symbol of the tensions of the time.
Through 271 illustrations and with interviews and unpublished material from the Picasso family archives, the book presents key moments, such as the visit of the Hungarian-French photographer Brassaï to Picasso's residence in Normandy, where he would take his iconic photographs of the famous plaster busts of Marie-Thérèse Walters, or the collaboration with the magazine Minotaure. The book also highlights how the bombing of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, influenced both his work Guernica and his political commitment.
Picasso's social life in the company of artists such as Man Ray, Salvador Dalí and Lee Miller and his love affairs with Walters, already mentioned, or those with Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot, are intermingled in the story.
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Museo Picasso Málaga: