Picasso The Mediterranean Years 1945-1962 The Mediterranean Years 1945-1962

The post-World War II years were a particularly prolific period for Picasso. In the view of John Richardson, Picasso's biographer, this period in the artist's life has not been properly explored. So he and the artist's grandson, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, are teaming up to organize their second exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, this time in London. The show, "Pablo Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (1945-1961)," will run June 4 through Aug. 28 at the gallery's Britannia Street space, where they are hoping to repeat the same success they had last year in New York when Mr. Richardson and Mr. Ruiz-Picasso organized "Picasso: Mosqueteros," focusing on the artist's late paintings and prints. By the exhibition's end on June 6 more than 100,000 visitors had seen it. For this new show Mr. Richardson, a Gagosian adviser, and Mr. Ruiz-Picasso are moving back in time. "During World War II his paintings were very funereal and dreary, as though they were contained within gray walls," Mr. Richardson said in a telephone interview. "But when he suddenly goes to the south of France, to the Cote d'Azur, it becomes a protean period of incredible virtuosity, where he revolutionizes sculptures, revolutionizes engraving techniques, revolutionizes ceramics and comes up with paintings that pit him against the great masters of the past." The show, which will feature about 100 works, will be more varied than the first exhibition. Besides paintings, drawings and prints, it will include ceramics and sculptures of all kinds: bronze, wood, those that incorporate found objects and some cut from metal

John Richardson is Picasso's acclaimed biographer.  He was the curator for Gagosian Gallery's 2009 acclaimed exhibition, Picasso: Mosqueteros.  Elizabeth Cowling is an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh.  Claude Arnaud is a French writer and acclaimed biographer of Jean Cocteau.