John Richardson

Art historian

John Richardson is an art historian, and is best-known for his biographical work on Picasso. He studied at the Slade School of Art before joining The New Stateman as an art and ballet critic in the early 1950s. He became friends with Picasso and other artists whilst living in France, where he moved in 1952, and has since written books about a number of French artists. He published his Whitbread Award-winning four-volume biography of Picasso, A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881-1906 in 1991.

Richardson moved to New York in the 1960s, and was chosen to run Christie's US office in 1964, before becoming Vice-President in charge of 19th and 20th century painting for M Knoedler & Co. He was later made Managing Director of Artemis, but retired in 1980 to focus on his writing. He was made a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 1993, and was the Slade Professor of Fine Art from 1995 to 1996. His other books include The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1999) and Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters (2001).