Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (1945–1962)

This book was published on the occasion of Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (1945–1962) at Gagosian, Britannia Street, London. The exhibition, which was curated by Picasso biographer Sir John Richardson with the artist’s grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, featured paintings, sculptures, prints, and ceramics. It focused on the postwar years in which Pablo Picasso began to spend more time on the Cote d’Azur, marking a return to a family life, and to the Mediterranean setting that had nourished some of his most important stylistic changes in the past.

The extensively illustrated book features a foreword by Larry Gagosian and essays by Elizabeth Cowling, on Picasso’s postwar sculpture and ceramics, and Claude Arnaud, on Picasso’s inspiring friendship with Jean Cocteau. It also includes selections from Cocteau’s diary and a selective chronology of the period covered by the exhibition compiled by Michael Cary and Cristina Colomar. Further, in addition to numerous photographs and color reproductions, it contains three single and four double gatefold illustrations as well as a twenty-three-page booklet reproducing pages from Picasso’s 1956 notebook added as a tip-in.