A Life of Picasso magnificently combines meticulous scholarship with irrestible narrative appeal. John Richardson draws on his close friendship with Picasso, his own diaries, with the collaboration of picasso's widow Jacqueline, and unprecedented access to his studio and papers to arrive at a profound understanding of the artist and his work. He has distilled a lifetime's study into a book that is monumental, enthralling and perceptive - at last, an account of the artist's life that is worthy of its subject. Volume I sheds new light on Picasso's innovations, obsessions and influences and reveals how his art and life were inextricably bound together. It explores his Spanish roots- his intensely Andalusian nature, his adolescence in Corunna and Madrid and his passion for Barcelona, where he became the hero of Catalan 'modernisme'. It chronicles his formative early years in Paris and his complex relationships with Apollinaire, Max Jacob and Gertrude Stein during the Blue and Rose periods. At the end of the book we see Picasso already poised to become the messiah of modern art, ready to develop into one of the great artist of the twentieth century.