A Life of Picasso

by John Richardson

  This was not true. Far from returning to Paris, Picasso stayed on to be feted by these “very dangerous” people. When he left, it was not to return to Paris but to go on to Burgos—and not by train but in his Hispano-Suiza. To Picasso’s fury, Giménez Caballero announced to the press that “the Picasso meeting … [was] a resounding propaganda coup…. the artist had been finally won over to the right by Primo de Rivera’s unctuous charm.”40 This outright lie convinced Picasso that he could no longer stay above the fray. It was time to commit himself: when he emerged from the political closet, he became a passionate supporter of the Republican cause in Spain and, thanks to the strategic blandishments of the opportunistic Eluard, a vocal supporter of the left in France. The comparison of Picasso’s eyes to Mussolini’s had settled that. In due course, an exhibition—by no means a retrospective—would take place shortly before civil war broke out in 1936,41 under Republican as opposed to Falangist auspices as a result of Eluard’s intervention.

  Within two years of the San Sebastián dinner, José Antonio would be dead— arrested and executed by the Republican militia, a victim of the civil war that his Falange had provoked. In commemoration of El Jefe’s “martyrdom,” Franco would rename many of the main streets in large cities of Spain Avenida José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Meanwhile (April 1935), Picasso’s cousin, the gallant general, had died of throat cancer. As Pando Despierto, who finally published “the terrible papers of General Picasso,” observed, “there were no speeches nor a state funeral… nor is there a street named after the general who saved the moral integrity of the military at the cost of suffering a personal Calvary.”42 No matter, his cousin Pablo would immortalize the name.

  The outbreak of civil war in Spain would politicize Picasso and re-Hispanicize his art, as witness his antifascist icon Guernica, which is thought by many, though not the artist—he attached more importance to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and La Danse— to be his finest work. To Picasso’s delight, refugee painters, poets, and architects, not to mention two of his Vilató nephews, settled in Paris and enabled him finally to establish a Spanish tertulia. Despite pressure from Eluard among others, Picasso did not join the Communists, just as he had resisted joining the surrealists. He would not do so until the end of World War II. According to Dora Maar,43 who was living with Picasso at the time, his ultimate conversion to communism was partly the consequence of his short-lived admiration of de Gaulle for liberating Paris. An invitation to dine with a group of leading Gaullists put paid to that. Their right-wing agenda put such a scare into Picasso that, without informing Dora, he joined the Communists a few days later. With Aragon and Joliot-Curie, the artist would become one of the party’s “Three Musketeers,”44 who were trotted out on appropriate cultural occasions to help rally the masses. He was also under pressure to come up with agitprop: the less said about the mercifully few examples, the better. At heart, Picasso never forsook his old gods. As he told a Spanish friend in the 1930s, “God is really another artist… like me. … I am God, I am God, I am God …”45

  SHORT TITLES

  Abbreviations of archives and libraries where original documents are located:

  Archives Picasso Picasso Archives at the Musée National Picasso, Paris

  Beinecke Library Gertrude Stein Archives, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  Pierpont Morgan Library Archives (Diaghilev/De Falla, Rosenberg), Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

  Ransom Center Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin

  Short titles of catalogs used to identify works by Picasso:

  Baer Brigitte Baer. Picasso: Peintre-Graveur. 7 vols. (Original editions of vols.

  I–II by Bernhard Geiser.) Bern: Kornfeld, 1933–96.

  JSLC Arnold Glimcher and Marc Glimcher, eds. Je suis le cahier: The Sketch-

  books of Picasso. New York: Pace Gallery, 1986.

  MP Musée Picasso: Catalogue sommaire des collections. 2 vols. Paris: Réunion

  des musées nationaux, 1985, 1987.

  MP Carnets Musée Picasso: Carnets: Catalogue des dessins. 2 vols. Paris: Réunion des

  musées nationaux, 1996.

  PF.III Josep Palau i Fabre. Picasso: From the Ballets to Drama (1917-1926).

  Trans. by Richard-Lewis Rees. Hagen, Germany: Könemann, 1999.

  S. Werner Spies. Picasso: The Sculptures. Trans. by Melissa Thorson House

  and Margie Mounier. Ostfildern/Stuttgart: Hatje Canz, 2000.

  Z. Christian Zervos. Pablo Picasso. 33 vols. Paris: Cahiers d’Art, 1932–78.

  Short titles of principal sources cited in the notes:

  Adéma Pierre Marcel Adéma. Guillaume Apollinaire. Paris: La Table Ronde, 1968.

  Aragon Louis Aragon. Ecrits sur l’art moderne. Paris: Flammarion, 1981.

  Armel Aliette Armel. Michel Leiris. Paris: Fayard, 1997.

  Arnaud Claude Arnaud. Jean Cocteau. Paris: Gallimard, 2003.

  Assouline Pierre Assouline. An Artful Life: A Biography of D. H. Kahnweiler,1884–1979. Trans. Charles Ruas. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990. Originally published 1988.

  Axsom Richard Hayden Axsom. Parade: Cubism as Theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994

  Bach Friedrich Teja Bach. Constantin Brancusi: Metamorphosen Plastischer Form. Cologne: Dumont, 1987.

  Baer 1997 Brigitte Baer. Picasso the Engraver. Trans. Iain Watson and Judith Schub.

  London: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

  Baldassari 1997 Anne Baldassari. Picasso and Photography: The Dark Mirror. Trans. Deke

  Dusinberre. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1997.

  Baldassari 1998a Anne Baldassari. “Olga Koklova and Dance.” In Picasso 1917–1924.

  Venice: Palazzo Grassi, 1998, 87–92.

  Baldassari 1998b Anne Baldassari. “1917–21: Tracing Picasso’s Iconography from L’Ital-

  ienne (The Italian Woman) to Trois femmes à lafontaine (Three Women at

  the Spring).” In Picasso 1917-1924. Venice: Palazzo Grassi, 1998, 100-5.

  Baldassari 2002 Anne Baldassari. “Exposition ‘Matisse-Picasso,’ galerie Paul Guillaume,

  Paris, 1918.” In Matisse Picasso. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux,

  2002, 361–4.

  Baldassari 2005 Anne Baldassari. Bacon/Picasso: La Vie des images. Paris: Flammarion,

  2005.

  Barr Alfred H. Barr Jr. Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art. New York: Museum of

  Modern Art, 1980. Originally published 1946.

  Beaumont Cyril W. Beaumont. The Diaghilev Ballet in London: A Personal Record.

  London: Putnam, 1945.

  Bell Clive Bell. Old Friends: Personal Recollections. London: Chatto and Win-

  dus, 1956.

  Bernadac and Michaël Marie-Laure Bernadac and Androula Michaël. Picasso: Propos sur l’art.

  Paris: Gallimard, 1998.

  Bernadac and Piot Marie-Laure Bernadac and Christine Piot, eds. Picasso: Collected Writ-

  ings. Trans. Carol Volk and Albert Bensoussan. London: Aurum Press,

  1989.

  Bernier Rosamond Bernier. “48, Paseo de Gracia.” L’Eil, no. 4 (April 15, 1955),

  4–13.

  Billot Marcel Billot. Journal de LAbbé Mugnier (1879-1939). Paris: Mercure

  de France, 1935.

  Blanche Jacques-Emile Blanche. “Retrospective Picasso.” LArt Vivant 3 (July

  1932), 333–41.

  Boehm, Mosch, and Schmidt Gottfried Boehm, Ulrich Mosch, and Katharina Schmidt. Canto

  dAmore: Classicism in Modern Art and Music 1914-1935. Basel: Kunst-

  museum, 1996.

  Boggs Jean Sutherland Boggs. Picasso & Things. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum

  of Art, 1992.

  Bois Yve-Alain Bois. Matisse and Picasso. Paris: Flammarion, 2001.

  Boyd Carolyn P. Boyd. Praetorian Politics in Liberal Spain. Chapel Hill: Univer-

  sity of North Carolina Press, 1979.

  Brassaï Brassaï. Picasso and Co
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  Doubleday, 1966. Originally published 1964.

  Brenan Gerald Brenan. The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and

  Political Background of the Civil War. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1964.

  Buckle 1971 Richard Buckle. Nijinsky. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971. Reprinted by Penguin Books, 1980.

  Buckle 1979 Richard Buckle. Diaghilev. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979. Reprinted by Hamish Hamilton, 1984.

  Buffet-Picabia Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia. Rencontres avec Picabia, Apollinaire, Cravan,

  Duchamp, Arp, Calder. Paris: Belfond, 1977.

  Buñuel Luis Buñuel. Mi ultimo suspiro (Memorias). Barcelona: Plaza & Janes,

  1982.

  Pierre Cabanne. Pablo Picasso: His Life and Times. Trans. Harold J.

  Cabanne 1977

  Salemson. New York: William Morrow, 1977.

  Cabanne 1984 Pierre Cabanne. “Picasso et les joies de la paternité.” L’Eil, no. 226

  (1974), 1–10.

  Cabanne 1992 Pierre Cabanne. Le Siècle de Picasso. Vol. 2, L’Epoque des métamor-

  phoses. Paris: Denoël, 1992.

  Caizergues and Seckel Pierre Caizergues and Hélène Seckel. Picasso/Apollinaire: Correspon-

  dance. Paris: Gallimard, 1992.

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  Chapon 1984 François Chapon. Jacques Doucet ou l’art du mécénat. Paris: Perrin, 1996.

  Originally published 1984.

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  Charles-Roux Edmonde Charles-Roux. Chanel: Her Life, Her “World—and the Woman

  behind the Legend She Herself Created. Trans. Nancy Amphoux. London:

  Jonathan Cape, 1975. Originally published 1974.

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  2002.

  Cocteau 1989 Jean Cocteau. Lettres à sa mère. Paris: Gallimard, 1989.

  Combalía Victoria Combalía. Picasso-Miró: Miradas cruzadas. Madrid: Electa,

  1998.

  Douglas Cooper. Picasso Theatre. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,

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  1968.

  Cousins and Seckel Judith Cousins and Hélène Seckel. “Chronology of Les Demoiselles d’Av-

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  Cowling 2002 Elizabeth Cowling. Picasso: Style and Meaning. London: Phaidon, 2002.

  Cowling 2006 Elizabeth Cowling. Visiting Picasso: The Notebooks and Letters of Roland

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  Daix 1977 Pierre Daix. La Vie de peintre de Pablo Picasso. Paris: Seuil, 1977.

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  Danchev Alex Danchev. Georges Braque: A Life. London: Hamish Hamilton,

  2005.

  Derouet 1999 Christian Derouet. “Juan Gris: Correspondances avec Léonce Rosenberg

  1915-1927.” Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne. Paris: Centre

  Pompidou, 1999.

  Derouet 2000 Christian Derouet. “Francis Picabia: Lettres à Léonce Rosenberg

  1929-1940.” Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne. Paris: Centre

  Pompidou, 2000.

  Derouet 2006 Christian Derouet. Cahiers d’Art: musée Zervos à Vézelay. Paris: Hazan,

  2006.

  Dolin Anton Dolin. Divertissement. London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1931.

  Donnelly Honoria Murphy Donnelly with Richard N. Billings. Sara & Gerald: Villa

  America and After. New York: Times Books, 1982.

  Duke Vernon Duke. Passport to Paris. Boston: Little, Brown, 1955.

  Everling Germaine Everling. LAnneau de Saturne. Paris: Fayard, 1970.

  Ferran A[ngel] F[erran]. “Interviu amb Picasso.” La Publicitat, October 19,

  1926.

  FitzGerald 1988 Michael C. FitzGerald. Pablo Picasso’s Monument to Guillaume Apolli-

  naire: Surrealism and Monumental Sculpture in France 1918-1959. Ann

  Arbor, Mich.: Garland Press, 1988.

  FitzGerald 1995 Michael C. FitzGerald. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of

  the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and

  Giroux, 1995.

  FitzGerald 1996 Michael C. FitzGerald. “The Modernists’ Dilemma: Neoclassicism and

  the Portrayal of Olga Khokhlova.” In Picasso and Portraiture: Representa-

  tion and Transformation. New York: Museum of Modern Art (1996),

  296–335.

  Flam Jack Flam. Matisse Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship.

  Cambridge, Mass.: Westview Press, 2003.

  Florman Lisa Florman. Myth and Metamorphosis: Picasso’s Classical Prints of the

  1930s. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002.

  García-Márquez Vicente García-Márquez. Massine: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1995.

  Gasman Lydia Gasman. Mystery, Magic and Love in Picasso, 1925-1938: Picasso

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  of the Parisian Art Market Between 1910 and 1930. New York: Garland

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  Geelhaar Christian Geelhaar. Picasso: Wegbererter und Förderer seines Aufstiegs

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  Georges-Michel 1923 Michel Georges-Michel. Ballets Russes. Paris: Editions du monde nou-

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  Georges-Michel 1957 Michel Georges-Michel. From Renoir to Picasso: Artists I Have Known.

  London: Gollancz, 1957.

  Gibson 1989 Ian Gibson. Federico García Lorca: A Life. London: Faber and Faber,

  1989.

  Ian Gibson. The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí. London: Faber and

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