“Every time I change a woman,” said Picasso, “I must burn the one who was the last. This way I get rid of them. This may be what brings back my youth."
Pablo Picasso
When it comes to Pablo Picasso, the first thing that comes to mind is his paintings and the words “the most expensive artist of the 20th century.” Not immediately and not everyone remembers scandalous stories related to the artist’s personal life. Meanwhile, the description of Pablo Picasso's love experiences can become a masterpiece, comparable in power to his creations. Being a genius, Picasso was brilliant in everything, including love. But if in his creativity his genius was creative, then in matters of the heart it had a deafening destructive force.
No matter how rude, blasphemous and vulgar it may sound, but (and the artist himself admitted this) for Picasso there were only 2 categories of women: goddesses and litter. Bowing before the goddesses, he tried to turn them into ordinary women whose love he was worthy of. But, not distinguishing half-tones, not knowing the measure in anything, including passion, not recognizing middle positions, he sooner or later turned each of his “goddesses” into litter.
According to contemporaries, Picasso had an amazing sexual attraction for women. And also - an unprecedented instinct that allows, from the numerous “tribe” of Eve’s daughters, to choose those who receive painful pleasure from emotional suffering, who are ready to completely dissolve in their loved one, giving him their energy and vitality. No one knows how many such women were in the life of the brilliant artist, but it is known that 7 of them had a special influence on Pablo, giving him inspiration, shaping his emotions and attitude in different periods of his life.
“Every time I change a woman,” said Picasso, “I must burn the one who was the last. This way I get rid of them. This may be what brings back my youth."
When it comes to Pablo Picasso, the first thing that comes to mind is his paintings and the words “the most expensive artist of the 20th century.” Not immediately and not everyone remembers scandalous stories related to the artist’s personal life. Meanwhile, the description of Pablo Picasso's love experiences can become a masterpiece, comparable in power to his creations. Being a genius, Picasso was brilliant in everything, including love. But if in his creativity his genius was creative, then in matters of the heart it had a deafening destructive force.
No matter how rude, blasphemous and vulgar it may sound, but (and the artist himself admitted this) for Picasso there were only 2 categories of women: goddesses and litter. Bowing before the goddesses, he tried to turn them into ordinary women whose love he was worthy of. But, not distinguishing half-tones, not knowing the measure in anything, including passion, not recognizing middle positions, he sooner or later turned each of his “goddesses” into litter.
According to contemporaries, Picasso had an amazing sexual attraction for women. And also - an unprecedented instinct that allows, from the numerous “tribe” of Eve’s daughters, to choose those who receive painful pleasure from emotional suffering, who are ready to completely dissolve in their loved one, giving him their energy and vitality. No one knows how many such women were in the life of the brilliant artist, but it is known that 7 of them had a special influence on Pablo, giving him inspiration, shaping his emotions and attitude in different periods of his life.
The muse of an aspiring artist. Fernanda Olivier
He was 23 years old when, being in the depression of the “blue period” and grieving for his friend, Carlos Casagemas, Pablo Picasso, in search of new experiences, left Spain and settled in one of the poor areas of Paris. His wish came true: along with the air of his new country, he greedily inhales the aroma of love.
Fernanda Olivier, a poor servant who lived nearby, immediately attracted the attention of the young artist with her bright, downright aristocratic beauty. Having invited a young girl to pose, Picasso becomes interested in her. Very soon Fernanda and Pablo become lovers and begin to live together in his small workshop. It was this beautiful and romantic love story that brought the artist out of depression and marked the beginning of a warm “pink” period. Circus performers and street performers lived next to the young people. As if spying on them, Picasso enthusiastically paints pictures on circus themes, including the famous “Girl on a Ball.”
Picasso is so inspired by his love that he only dreams of Fernanda being nearby, creating an atmosphere of inspiration in his studio. She managed to do this for 7 years. For Picasso, this was a time of creative experimentation: the “Rose Period” was followed by the “African Period”, and then came the turn of Cubism. Inspired by the beauty of his beloved, as if testing her strength, he portrays Fernanda in different styles, changes the proportions of her body, and experiments with facial features.
As Picasso's feelings cooled, Fernanda's features in his paintings became angular and lost their charm. The novel, which survived the hardships of a poor life and the joys of its first successes, lasted so long and seemed endless, “came to naught.” Picasso had a long life ahead, full of creative achievements, success and recognition. There was new love ahead...
The book “Loving Picasso: The Personal Diary of Fernanda Olivier” was published in the UK, replete with piquant details about the relationship between the great artist and one of his many muses.
Pablo Picasso and Amelie Lang (Fernanda Olivier - pseudonym) met in 1904 - both were a little over twenty years old, but their life experiences were incomparable. Picasso had recently arrived from Spain and rented a tiny studio in Montmartre; Fernanda became his first lover. By this time, she herself had already experienced a lot: behind her was a difficult childhood, a terrible marriage, a lesbian relationship with her husband’s relative, an affair with the sculptor Debien. At the end of this novel, Fernanda met a young Spanish artist, whose appearance - shabby clothes, long hair that had not been washed for a long time - horrified her. And yet, soon Fernanda moved from one workshop to another. Picasso's home made a truly depressing impression - there was not even furniture in the room.
The romance between Picasso and Fernanda lasted eight years. And all these years, Picasso painted her - now sleeping, now making love to him, now standing naked with her hands folded in prayer. In his work, she was his muse, but in life everything was much more prosaic. The “miserable poverty” and “morbid jealousy” of her lover made Fernanda despondent; Her forced idleness depressed her even more - Picasso did not allow her to pose for other artists, and treated her attempts at literary creativity with poorly concealed contempt. Life improved a little when Gertrude and Leo Stein and gallery owners Ambroise Volard and Daniel Henri Kahnweiler began buying Picasso's works. The artist and his lover had the opportunity to move into a large apartment with a workshop near the famous Place Pigalle. They got a servant, and Fernanda, to celebrate, even began introducing herself as “Madame Picasso.” But for Pablo, work still came first, and Fernanda gradually ceased to interest him. By 1911, the romance between Picasso and Fernanda had faded.
Picasso left his former lover penniless. However, poverty was not the most difficult test - she had already gotten used to it. It turned out to be unbearable for pride that Picasso soon after their breakup became incredibly rich. It was then that Fernanda decided to write memoirs about the years spent in the company of a genius. She hoped that the scandalous book would attract attention to her. In the summer of 1930, excerpts from the memoirs appeared in the Parisian newspaper Soir. Picasso was furious - Olivier spoke about their joint smoking of opium, about their intimate relationships, about the poverty in which they lived. The scandal really broke out, but it did not bring money to Fernanda. Then she began to bombard her former lover with letters threatening to reveal all his secrets to the world if he did not share the money. But Picasso was relentless. In 1933, Fernanda published the book “Picasso and His Friends.” Max Jacob called it “the best mirror of the Cubist Acropolis,” and Gertrude Stein even promised to find an American publisher. However, Stein quickly forgot about this promise - at that time her own book, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” was published, which quickly became a bestseller. Fernanda was again left with nothing.
Fernanda Olivier died in 1966 in poverty and obscurity. Her apartment was looted, and some of her personal papers disappeared along with a few valuables. However, Fernanda's godson, Gilbert Crill, collected all that remained of her memoirs, diaries and various notes. The fruit of his efforts was a book published in 1988, many years after Picasso’s death, in Paris. It was thanks to this book that the “pre-Picassian” period of Fernanda’s life became known; in “Picasso and His Friends” very little is written about it.
His beautiful Eva - Marcel Humbert
In 1911, at the end of his relationship with Fernanda, Picasso met Marcelle Humbert, a woman whose fragile, almost transparent beauty could not leave him indifferent. By the time they met, both were not free: he had a relationship with Fernanda, who had by that time become hysterical and overly jealous (? - see story above), she was the mistress of Louis Marcoussis, a Polish painter.
Taken by surprise by the feeling that gripped them, Pablo and Marcel literally ran away from their passions, setting off to wander around Europe. For Picasso, this was a completely new feeling, so primitive that he named his beloved Eva. She, his subtle and sensual Eve, is depicted in the canvas “My Beauty,” painted in 1911. He dedicated many more paintings to her, creating a unique series “I Love Eve”, the main motif of which was Marcelle’s tender and fragile nature, which the artist identified with femininity, as well as melodies and musical instruments.
This was the period of synthetic cubism. A time when Picasso not only painted, but created sensual, textured canvases, working both as an artist and as a decorator. A time that was so full of happiness that it could not last too long: Marcelle was sick with tuberculosis and died in 1915.
Russian love of a hot Spaniard - Olga Khokhlova
Pablo Picasso had a hard time with the death of Marcel Humbert and for a long time did not allow new love into his heart. He created an aura of freedom and dissipation around himself. No one around him believed that this eternally searching Spaniard with sparkling eyes would ever settle down. In 1917, the artist managed to surprise everyone: he not only got married, he connected his life with someone who did not at all correspond to the image and style of bohemian life in Paris, the center of which was Picasso.
Picasso met ballerina Olga Khokhlova in Rome in the spring of 1917. By that time, she had already been in the famous Russian Ballet troupe of Sergei Diaghilev for five years. She was a diligent dancer, had good technique and looked good on stage, but she never became a prima dancer and, apart from a few solo parts, usually performed in the corps de ballet.
Olga was born in 1891 in the Ukrainian city of Nezhin into the family of a colonel in the Russian Imperial Army. She went to ballet, despite her parents' prohibition. She was treated kindly by Diaghilev, who loved to have girls from “good families” in his troupe. Olga had a pleasant appearance, regular features, although, judging by the photographs, she was not a real beauty. But she was distinguished by excellent manners and a special Russian “charm”, which has always been valued in Europe.
Serge Diaghilev, attracting the biggest names to work on ballets, invited the famous artist Picasso to design one of his productions. How did it happen, the artist’s friends wondered, that he fell in love with a ballerina, who, in their opinion, was an unremarkable person in all respects?
Picasso, who enjoyed noisy and scandalous fame in Paris, was then thirty-six years old. Is it possible that to the painter, satiated in love and not too choosy in his relationships, Olga’s ordinariness seemed exotic? However, he was just in the “Russian period”, when he liked everything Russian. It’s no wonder that the Russian ballerina “fit in” well with such predilections. “Be careful,” Diaghilev warned with a grin, “you must marry Russian girls.” "Are you joking!" - answered the artist, who believed that he would remain the master in any situation.
However, the ballerina was in no hurry to respond to his violent feelings, although she liked Picasso. Women were attracted to him by his special magnetism, inner fire, and the look of his black eyes, as if “charged with electricity.” In addition, Olga understood perfectly well that she could no longer make a career in ballet; she had to think about establishing a family home. “Can an artist be a serious person?” – her mother asked Diaghilev. “No less serious than a ballerina,” he joked.
In May 1917, the premiere of the ballet Parade, designed by Picasso, took place at the Chatelet Theater in Paris. The production was not a success. The poor reception from the audience did not bother Diaghilev at all, and he took “Parade” to Madrid and Barcelona. The artist in love also followed there. At that time, he painted Olga a lot, and in a purely realistic manner - the ballerina herself insisted on this, who did not like experiments in painting that she did not understand. “I want,” she said, “to recognize my face.”
In Barcelona, Picasso introduced Olga to his future mother-in-law. She warmly received the girl, went to performances with her participation, but once warned: “With my son, who was created only for himself and for no one else, no woman can be happy.”
When the Russian Ballet went to Latin America, Olga decided to stay - she made a choice between the difficult life of an ordinary dancer and marriage to a famous and successful painter.
“His understanding of the Russian character became even more subtle when he married one of the artists of our troupe,” wrote Tamara Karsavina. “Olga made her debut with us as a fairly capable amateur, but under Cecchetti’s guidance she developed a real talent, and her teacher was very angry when she quit the stage.”
In France, the lovers settled in a small house in the Parisian suburb of Montrouge - with a maid, dogs and birds. The artist continued to work a lot, usually at night. It was in Montrouge that Picasso painted the famous “Portrait of Olga in an Armchair.” Comparing it with a photograph taken at the moment of posing, it is easy to see that the artist somewhat embellished her features.
Many friends dissuaded Picasso from marrying Olga, believing that it would be unsuccessful. The artist did not heed their advice. On July 12, 1918, the wedding ceremony of Pablo Picasso and Olga Khokhlova took place in the city hall of one of the Parisian districts. From there they went to the Russian Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, where the wedding took place. Among the guests and witnesses were Diaghilev, Apollinaire, Cocteau, Matisse.
The artist was convinced that he would marry for life, so the marriage contract included the following clause: all property of the spouses is common. In case of divorce, this meant dividing it equally, including all the paintings.
Olga, without any regret, turned into “Madame Picasso”... The master of painting had nothing against her buying expensive outfits for herself, but he himself preferred to wear the same suit. He spent the money on purchasing some exotic things and generously helped his poor brothers. His wife, on the contrary, strove for a secular life. She liked dinners in expensive restaurants, receptions, and balls hosted by the Parisian nobility. Olga even managed to alienate his bohemian friends from the artist for some time. Together with his young wife, he found himself in the center of attention everywhere and was gradually drawn into the whirlwind of social life. He ordered himself many suits, began to wear an impeccable tuxedo, a gold watch in his vest pocket, and did not miss a single dinner party.
Gradually, Picasso's unbridled artistic nature came into conflict with the secular-snobbish life that he was forced to lead. On the one hand, he wanted to have a family and loved his wife, but on the other, a conflict with Olga was brewing. After all, the artist sought to remain, as before, completely free and was ready to sacrifice everything else for the sake of this.
On February 4, 1921, the Picasso couple had a son, Paulo (Paul). So the famous artist, at the age of forty, became a father for the first time... This event excited him and filled him with pride. Images of a happy mother and baby appeared on numerous canvases and drawings of that period.
Olga treated the child with almost painful passion and adoration. She hoped that the birth of a son would strengthen their family, in the foundation of which the first cracks appeared. The young woman felt her husband gradually returning to his inner world, the world of art, to which she had no access. Tired of a meaningless social life, he withdrew into himself and seemed to isolate himself from his wife with an invisible wall. In addition, she did not have a good relationship with most of Picasso’s friends, except for Apollinaire, and he died in November 1918 after being seriously wounded at the front...
In fact, throughout Picasso’s life his main passion was creativity. He often talked about the 16th-century French ceramic artist Bernard de Palisy, who tossed his furniture into the kiln to keep the fire going while firing. Picasso loved this story very much and saw in it a real example of “burning” in the name of art. He himself claimed that he would have thrown both his wife and children into the oven so that the fire would not go out.
Seeing indifference on the part of her husband, Olga lost calm, became nervous, drank coffee cup after cup and irritated Picasso, who wanted to free himself from her annoying care. Every day the artist became more and more burdened by the bonds of marriage with the eternally dissatisfied fat woman, into whom the once graceful woman was turning.
...In January 1927, on the street, in the crowd leaving the metro, Picasso saw a beautiful girl with gray-blue eyes. "He grabbed my hand and said, 'I'm Picasso!' You and I will accomplish great things together,” Marie Therese Walter later recalled. She was then seventeen years old. She knew nothing about art or Picasso.
“Every time I change a woman,” said Picasso, “I must burn the one who was the last. This way I get rid of them. They will no longer be around me and make my life difficult. This may also bring back my youth. By killing a woman, they destroy the past that she represents.”
Hatred towards Olga began to be embodied in painting. In a series of paintings dedicated to bullfighting, she was depicted as a horse or an old vixen. Later explaining the reasons for their breakup, the artist said: “She wanted too much from me... It was the worst period in my life.”
In 1935, his mistress and model Marie Thérèse gave birth to a daughter, Maya, after which the parents’ relationship somehow immediately came to naught. And Picasso’s attention had already been attracted by a new model - artist and photographer Dora Maar, whom he met in a cafe... Their relationship lasted until 1946. Probably, indeed, “baby Picasso” (his height was slightly more than 1 m 60 cm) had some kind of magnetic attraction for women of all ages!
However, he did not want a divorce, which would result in him losing half of his fortune, including his paintings. Olga was the first to break down. She could no longer endure either her husband’s hatred or the presence of endless rivals. After another, particularly painful family scene in July 1935, she and her son left home. Soon, with the help of lawyers, the property was divided, but from a legal point of view, the divorce never happened, and Olga officially remained Picasso’s wife until her death...
In 1943, Picasso met the artist Françoise Gilot, who was twenty-one years old. For some period she became his new muse. This was another blow for Olga - she continued to be jealous of her ex-husband for all his new connections, writing angry notes to him in a mixture of Spanish, French and Russian. She usually attached portraits of Rembrandt or Beethoven to the messages and told him that he would never become as great.
In the summer, Olga went to the Mediterranean town of Golfe Juan, where Picasso and Francoise lived with their son Claude, and literally followed on the heels of the young woman. She silently endured insults and sometimes even blows, because she understood that Olga was suffering from loneliness and despair.
In the mid-1950s, Olga Khokhlova often visited her grandchildren. She “often told... fairy tales in beautiful and melodic Russian,” her granddaughter recalled. “...and we have never heard a bad word from her about Picasso, who left her to the mercy of fate.”
Olga died after a long and painful illness in February 1955. The artist did not come to the funeral. He outlived his first wife by eighteen years...
Picasso's Burning Passion - Marie-Therese Walter
In 1927, at the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, Picasso met a modest, shy girl of seventeen years old, who became his lover and one of the most famous muses of modern art. “I am Picasso,” he announced, but this name meant nothing to Marie-Theresa.
He took her to a bookstore, showed her a monograph of his drawings and asked if he could see her again. The girl was flattered, the artist aroused her curiosity, and she agreed. Thus began a long-term and secret love story that turned Marie-Therese into the main object of Picasso’s bold aesthetic experiments.
More than any other woman whom Picasso loved and painted, Marie-Thérèse, with her beautiful figure and delicate profile, fueled the artist's dream of eternal youth. Her first appearance in his work was encrypted: these were her initials formed by lines in the painting Guitare a la main blanche, (1927), but later the appearance of the blond goddess on the canvases openly declared a new love. In his works, Picasso focused on a calm and clear face, on her athletic figure, endlessly inventively varied forms and strived for extreme expressiveness.
Marie-Thérèse became the catalyst for his imagination and the occasion for numerous works, her presence giving rise to a new style of drawing and returning the master to sculpture in the 1930s. Maria Teresa acquired the status of a myth and forever entered the history of European culture. But she herself remained a mystery even to Picasso’s closest friends. He was then married to Olga Khokhlova, a Russian ballerina, and their son Paulo was five years old. Mademoiselle Walter was underage, which forced Picasso to keep their romance a secret.
Even after Marie-Therese gave birth to her daughter Maya in 1935, Picasso continued to divide his time between his professional life as a star artist, his life as a married man, and his life with Marie-Therese and his daughter, spending Thursdays and weekends with them. Soon after Maya's birth, Picasso's wife found out about her husband's affair and immediately left with her son. The scandalous breakup plunged the artist into depression, he began to work less, and the bright eroticism disappeared from his works.
In 1935, Picasso met the next woman in his life, Dora Maar. Parallel. He often had two women at the same time. There were also three. Dora and Marie-Therese met by chance in Picasso's studio when he was painting the famous Guernica. The women demanded that he choose one of them. The artist replied that they should fight for him. And they began to fight. It is possible that it was this episode that determined the appearance of crying, despairing women in the sketches for Guernica and in its final version. Once in an interview, the artist said that this fight became one of the brightest impressions of his entire life.
The following year, Marie-Thérèse and Picasso separated. But she, like some of the artist’s other lovers, could no longer live without him. They continued to meet occasionally. Their relationship gradually came down to material support from Picasso and correspondence, which continued until the artist’s last days. Four years after Picasso's death, Marie-Thérèse hanged herself in a garage.
Woman in Tears - Dora Maar
It was an unusual and strange sight. A black-haired woman of extraordinary beauty, placing her black-gloved hand on the tabletop, casually played with a knife, trying to quickly stick the tip between her fingers. She succeeded, and, pulling the knife out of the table, she continued her dangerous occupation. This happened in 1935 in the Parisian cafe “Two Macaques”. Just here the poet Paul Eluard introduced 53-year-old Pablo Picasso to a magically attractive stranger - 28-year-old Dora Maar. Suddenly Dora, sitting next to her eminent interlocutors, missed her target and wounded her hand. Blood appeared, stunning the Spanish painter. Excited, he asked to give him these gloves and kept them for a long time in a glass cabinet. Thus began their dizzying romance that lasted seven years.
The entire seven-year story of their love was comparable to that bizarre first meeting - romantic and tragic. Later it was claimed that the arrogant and gloomy Dora with the face of a saint did not end up in this cafe by chance, but had woven a real conspiracy with her surrealist friends in order to lure the artist into her network. Picasso agreed to the offer to make a photograph of him and that same evening, together with Dora, he went to her studio on Astorg Street...
Negatives of this photo session were found in Dora Maar's archives after her death. Dora's real name is Teodora Henrietta Markovic (1907-1997). She was the daughter of a Croatian architect and a French mother, grew up in Buenos Aires, where her father designed buildings, and spoke fluent Spanish. In 1926, Dora returned to France and began visiting the studio of the artist Andre Lot, where she met major masters of photography - Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï and Man Ray. She soon became close to the French surrealists and, choosing the pseudonym Dora Maar, became the “muse” of this avant-garde movement.
Proud, sensual, despising convention, Dora Maar was the star of the Parisian artistic bohemia. With raven-black hair and bronze-green eyes, she literally mesmerized men with her broken, “convulsive” beauty. In addition, the female photographer was distinguished by extravagant elegance: she loved wide-brimmed hats and long gloves, smoked cigarettes with a mouthpiece at least 25 centimeters long and painted her pointed nails purple. With the constant “Rolleiflex” in her hands, Dora Maar literally burst into the capital of world art, which was then Paris, and quickly became a famous fashion and advertising photographer, the author of original society portraits and surreal photomontages. She photographed the crippled in London and the blind in Barcelona, clochards in Paris and jugglers in Lisbon, creating a mysterious and eerie atmosphere, emphasizing the bizarre and grotesque of life, unafraid to combine the beautiful and the ugly, luxury and poverty. Dora Maar's haunting theme was unnaturally curved human bodies and strange exotic animals. In her original photomontages, she violated the proportions of objects, combined incompatible ideas, used original angles, and already here one could detect the beginnings of her morbid tendency towards fear and melancholy.
Critics argued that Dora Maar presses the button of the device at the moment when reality is “upset.” They noted the “unusual, exciting” nature of her photographs, radiating “an unsettling strangeness of existence.” The photographer's keen eye penetrates the dark side of things, commentators wrote, calling her style "tragic baroque" and "aesthetics of disaster." And in the carefree hubbub of “cheerful Paris,” hysterical notes were already beginning to sound, and the song “Everything is fine, beautiful marquise” began to acquire a new meaning and strange popularity. The city was still “a holiday that is always with you,” but financial scandals were already breaking out in it, and on the streets the communists clashed with the extreme right.
On the night of February 7, 1934, a fascist putsch was attempted in France. In response, the left-wing Popular Front is created. The civil war is raging in Spain, the Basque town of Guernica has been wiped off the face of the earth as a result of barbaric Nazi bombing, and the breath of world conflict can already be felt. At the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937, Picasso’s monumental “Guernica” was exhibited, and above the exhibition town, as if foreshadowing the coming battle, the flags of Nazi Germany with a swastika and the Soviet Union with a hammer and sickle fluttered.
On June 14, 1940, the Nazis enter Paris. However, the occupation did not bring any particular hardships to Picasso, except that he was banned from exhibitions as a “degenerate artist.” This is how the Nazis dubbed all avant-garde art. Legend has it that a German officer came to Picasso and, taking a photograph of Guernica from his pocket, asked: “Did you do this?” “No,” replied the painter, “you did it.”
In the spirit of the times, Dora Maar was a “committed” lady and did not hide her radical left convictions. She actively participated in the “gauchist” groups “Octobr”, “Mass” and “Counterattack”, engaging in what today we would call “agitprop”. In 1934, together with Breton and Eluard, she signed the “Call to Fight”, which was published by the Committee of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals.
When the significant meeting took place in the cafe “Two Macaques”, with which this story began, Picasso was experiencing a creative crisis and had not worked for six months. Dora Maar helped the artist get out of the impasse, leading him to new paths in his work, pushing him towards the avant-garde movement and political themes. Picasso became closer to the surrealists and created such civil works as Franco's Dreams and Lies. The mutual feeling was intertwined with a creative dialogue: Dora taught the painter photography techniques, and she herself, under the influence of Picasso, began to paint. “With four hands” they make so-called “photogravures” on glass, which they use as giant negatives, and then print them on photographic paper. But most importantly, Dora Maar essentially invented a new genre - reporting on the birth of a work of art. In 1937, she traced in her photographs the history of the creation of the painting that was destined to become world famous - “Guernica”, thus allowing us to look into the creative laboratory of the great artist. And this merit of hers in art is difficult to overestimate.
Day after day, with the zeal of a chronicler, she recorded on film the stages of formation of a monumental work, offering the author new points of reference for continuing work on it. Dora Maar is not just a witness, but also a co-author of Guernica, as evidenced by hundreds of negatives and contact prints discovered in her personal archive after her death in 1997. Numerous art historians have recognized that after the photo report on the history of the birth of Guernica, the view of modern painting radically changed, which could no longer be interpreted in the same way as before the discovery of Dora Maar.
Dora never posed for Picasso, and yet he painted many portraits of her - graphic, classical and cubist, in a hat, with green nails, in the form of a chimera. The most famous of them is "The Sobbing Woman", which, according to critics, symbolizes the suffering of Spain under the fascist yoke. Commentators pompously wrote that Dora Maar's tears were "the tears of thousands of women who lost their husbands in the Spanish Civil War." But, perhaps, it is not without reason that they claim that portraits take away people’s vital energy, bring illness, betrayal and separation, and some religions even prohibit depicting human faces. For example, Auguste Rodin never asked his wife to pose and lived a long life with her. But he captured his muse Camille Claudel in the famous “Kiss”, and the model spent two decades in a madhouse...
Picasso, who liked to imagine himself as a Minotaur, who in his eyes embodied masculine strength and creative charge, created a series of etchings during this period in which it is not difficult to recognize Dora Maar, sacrificed to this mythical beast.
For Picasso, desire was associated with violence, and sex and creativity in his eyes were inseparable and mutually nourished each other. “Art is not chaste,” the artist said, “and if it is chaste, then it is not art.” Contemporaries recall that Picasso, with childish innocence, told his friends: “I beat Dora, she looks so prettier when she cries.” And in response to reproaches, he objected: “For me, she is a woman who cries. I didn’t write it like that out of pleasure or sadism. I can only write what I see, and this is the deep essence of Dora.”
The love between Picasso and Dora Maar, which blossomed during the war, did not stand the test of the world. Their romance lasted seven years, and it was a story of broken, hysterical love. Could she have been different? The Pyrenees and the Balkans are the birthplace of both - two lands where dark instincts and gloomy superstitions rage, where life is full of secret signs, and death is always close. Dora Maar was wild in her feelings and in her creativity. She had an unbridled temperament and a fragile psyche: bursts of energy alternated with periods of deep depression. Picasso is usually called a “sacred monster,” but it seems that in human relations he was simply a monster. Some said about the painter: “If Picasso is a genius, then he is a genius of evil.”
For the passionate Dora, the break with Picasso was a disaster. Dora ended up in the Paris psychiatric hospital of St. Anne, where she was treated with electric shocks. She was rescued from there and brought out of the crisis by her old friend, the famous psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. After this, Dora completely withdrawn into herself, becoming for many a symbol of a woman whose life was shattered by her love for the cruel genius of Picasso. Secluded in her apartment near the Rue Grand-Augustin, she plunged into mysticism and astrology, and converted to Catholicism. Her life stopped perhaps in 1944, when there was a break with Picasso.
Later, when Dora returned to painting, her style changed radically: now from under her brush came lyrical views of the banks of the Seine and landscapes of the Luberon. Friends organized an exhibition of her work in London, but it went unnoticed. However, Dora herself did not come to the opening day, explaining later that she was busy, as she was drawing a rose in her hotel room...
Having survived for a quarter of a century what Andre Breton said was the “mad love” of her life, Dora Maar died in July 1997 at the age of 90, alone and in poverty. And about a year later, her portrait “Sobbing Woman” was sold at auction for 37 million francs.
The true scale of the original artist Dora Maar, whom some considered only the mistress of Georges Bataille and Pablo Picasso, became clear only after her death, when access to her archives and collections became available. Only then did many learn that Dora Maar had brought her original talent to the altar of love and undeservedly remained in the shadow of the all-consuming genius of Picasso.
THEY have always been beautiful and young. This Picasso was at first nineteen years old, then thirty-five, fifty, seventy-four, and they were always seventeen, twenty-three...
The first in this row was Fernanda Olivier, a young woman with a very curvaceous figure, who inspired the master to create the image of a female guitar. Yes, he, in fact, never treated women as living beings. More than once the artist has stated that he divides the fair sex into “goddesses” and “doormats.” At the same time, the process of transforming the former into the latter was a special pleasure. But, strangely, the women did not resist.
It was generally difficult to resist Picasso - Spanish blood was boiling, his incredible gaze captivated and forced him to obey. Fernanda
Picasso met this unusually beautiful girl, whose appearance could rightfully be attributed to the ideal of beauty of the beginning of the century, in France, or rather in Paris, where the genius moved, secretly dreaming of gaining worldwide fame. At that moment, both of them did not have a penny to their name, but it seemed that this fact did not particularly bother them - after all, they were still so young.
Although, to tell the truth, each of them still had some life experience behind them. Picasso had already gained fame in Spain, and Fernanda, whom her parents had married off to an old man too early, by this time had had enough of her married life with a man who, to top it all off, by the end of his life’s journey had also become mentally retarded.
Fernanda captivated Picasso so much with her beauty that he imperceptibly switched in his work from gloomy blue tones to pink and pale blue. For nine whole years, the artist will passionately love his muse and desire only one thing - for her to lie on the sofa all day long, doing nothing, and create a sensual atmosphere in his studio, which famous French writers, poets and artists willingly visited. Which, however, she did very well.
"Fernanda in a black mantilla." 1905
Pablo Picasso and his women. Women have always adored Picasso. No matter how rude, blasphemous and vulgar it may sound, (and the artist himself admitted this), for Picasso there were only 2 categories of women: goddesses and litter. Bowing before the goddesses, he tried to turn them into ordinary women whose love he was worthy of. But, not distinguishing half-tones, not knowing the measure in anything, including passion, not recognizing middle positions, he sooner or later turned each of his “goddesses” into litter. According to contemporaries, Picasso had an amazing sexual attraction for women. And also - an unprecedented instinct that allows, from the numerous “tribe” of Eve’s daughters, to choose those who receive painful pleasure from emotional suffering, who are ready to completely dissolve in their loved one, giving him their energy and vitality. No one knows how many such women were in the life of the brilliant artist, but it is known that 7 of them had a special influence on Pablo, giving him inspiration, shaping his emotions and attitude in different periods of his life. The only enduring passion in Picasso's life was art, and in his relationships with women he always showed inconstancy. "Every time I change women, I must burn the last one." Picasso
His first lover was Fernanda Olivier (she was 18, he was 23 years old). In Paris, Pablo Picasso lives in a poor quarter in Montmartre, in a hostel where aspiring artists lived and where Fernanda Olivier sometimes poses for them. There she meets Picasso, becomes his model and his girlfriend. The lovers lived in poverty. In the mornings they stole croissants and milk. Gradually people began to buy Picasso's paintings.
Pablo Picasso and Fernanda Olivier in Montmartre with dogs. 1904. They lived together for almost a decade, and from this period a large number of both the actual portraits of Fernanda and generally female images painted from her remained. According to researchers, she was also the model for the creation of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” one of Picasso’s main paintings, a turning point for the art of the 20th century. She, a tall and beautiful girl of noble appearance, at first was just curious about the “eccentric Spaniard with sparkling eyes” (the short Pablo was about her shoulder tall). But interest quickly gave way to love. And with every year of their life together, Fernanda’s feelings only intensified. But the young, ambitious artist, full of creative plans, had no time for his family. Picasso starts a relationship on the side. Picasso spent nine years with his First Woman. The features, nature, character of Fernanda Olivier are captured in the works of that time - and these are not only numerous “portraits of Fernanda”, but also all those works where the model lives as a “motive”. According to researchers, she was also the model for the creation of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” one of Picasso’s main paintings, a turning point for the art of the 20th century. 1. Reclining Nude (Fernanda), 1906 2. Portrait of Fernanda, 1906 3. Fernanda in a black mantilla, 1905 4. Portrait of Fernanda Olivier in a headscarf, 1906 5. Woman with pears (Fernanda), 1909 6." Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", 1907
Marcel Humbert (Eva Guell) Once the writer Gertrude Stein visited Picasso when he was finishing work on the painting “My Beauty” (1911). “It can’t be Fernande Olivier,” she immediately responded. It really wasn’t Fernanda; the canvas depicted the woman who took her place in the artist’s heart - Marcel Humbert. The painting “My Beauty” became a kind of declaration of love. Pablo and Marcel met in 1911 at the Hermitage cafe in Paris. Picasso had been living with his model Fernanda Olivier for 9 years; Marcel had long been the mistress of the Polish artist Louis Marcoussis. Pablo and Marcel fell in love with each other and broke up with their former passions. They went to travel around Europe so as not to meet anyone they knew - they wanted to be just the two of them. Picasso called his beloved Eva. This symbolized his internal renewal: Eve is the name of the first woman on earth, respectively, he is Pablo - Adam - the first man. Marcel's relationship with Pablo coincided with the transition of his work from analytical to synthetic cubism. It is surprising that Picasso, with his sociable temperament, usually “shouting” from his canvases about his love, did not create a single portrait of Eva that would give an idea of her real appearance. When the gallery of images of Picasso's women was created, it was not possible to find a single portrait of Marcelle, except for one single photograph. Eva's fragile physique also caused her pain. She contracted tuberculosis; at the beginning of the century, this disease was not always successfully cured. In the spring of 1915, Marcelle Humbert died in hospital. 1. Photo 2. Nude, I Love Eve, 1912 3. Violin. I love Eve, 1912 4.. Guitar `I love Eve`, 1912
Olga Khokhlova This passion consumed him completely. Picasso really thought it was love for life. Proof of this is the marriage contract, in which all his paintings belong to him and her equally. Having settled in Paris, Olga furnished the house with chic and luxury, according to the latest fashion. A car with a driver, an artist’s studio that occupies the entire second floor, purebred dogs, events, dinner parties and receptions. The closeness and warm attitude of the top officials of the state... Olga loves expensive clothes, caviar and champagne. Pablo is also not averse to having his suit made by an expensive couturier. A gold watch peeks out from his vest pocket. He is proud of his wife, her ability to behave in this highest society, her unusual beauty, posture, and indulges her in her desire to live in grand style. He writes and paints her portraits, and she tells him that she wants to recognize her face. Portraits of that time are recognizable. Concentrated, serious eyes, impeccably straight nose. Restraint and stiffness, as if she was still wearing that heavy cubic costume invented by Picasso for Diaghilev’s ballet “Parade”. Thirty-year-old Olga gives birth to a son, Paulo, for her forty-year-old husband. This is the happiest period in their family life. Pablo paints a lot of tender portraits of Olga and little Paul in a Harlequin costume, wearing a round hat, sitting on a donkey. Can an idyll last forever? Picasso began to feel burdened by the measured life and the role of salon portrait painter imposed by Olga. He has already painted plenty of paintings in the neoclassical style. Seeing his cooling, Olga began to be jealous, at first without reason. He loved her. Until he met seventeen-year-old Marie - Therese Walter. A war between once loved ones. There are no winners in it. Pablo emerged from the battle with fewer losses: he continued to create, littering his path with fragments of women’s hearts, and she spent the rest of her life alone, falling into depression and jealousy. Not wanting a division of property with his hated wife, Picasso did not file for divorce: Olga Khokhlova remained his legal wife until her death, until 1955. He did not come to the funeral, saying that he was painting... 1. Portrait of a woman with an ermine collar (Olga), 1923 2. Head of a woman (Olga Khokhlova), 1935 3. Olga Khokhlova, 1917 4. Portrait of Olga 2, 1923 year 5. Portrait of Olga in a chair, 1917
Mapia Teresa Walter January 8, 1927 Pablo Picasso, walking in the Lafayette Gallery in Paris, met the charming seventeen-year-old blonde Marie-Therese Walter. From this chance acquaintance began a connection that determined an important period in the artist’s work and the entire life of this woman. The time of love for Marie-Therese Walter was special - both in life and in work. The works of this period differed sharply from previously created paintings both in style and color. The period of Marie-Therese Walter, especially before the birth of his daughter, is the pinnacle of his work. She was far from Olga's sophistication; the girl knew nothing about art. However, the creator longed for new forms and he received them. Maria Teresa became the mistress, model and muse of the great master. Picasso was then married to Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, their son Paulo was 5 years old. This, as well as the fact that Mademoiselle Walter was underage, forced Picasso to keep their affair a secret. However, in his work the presence of this young woman was obvious. Along with the image of Marie Teresa, the embodiment of femininity comes into the surreal period of Picasso’s work; it is a kind of “period within a period.” Tense, broken lines are replaced by rounded ones. The female body seems elastic and soft at the same time, while the rich color contrasts with the smoothness of the outline. Most of the paintings depicting Marie are subject to the rhythm of a lullaby, the intoxicating “swaying” of colors, they are thoroughly imbued with sensuality. This reflects Picasso’s attitude towards Marie-Theresa: there is not even a hint of equality in it. She is not a life partner, not a wife, she is an object of desire, a wonderful artist’s toy. Marie's lively temperament, peaceful and cheerful character allowed her to come to terms with her role in Pablo's life. In July 1930, Picasso bought the Chateau de Boisgelou in Normandy, which served as his studio and Marie-Therese's home. There the master creates numerous sculptural images of her. One of them, “Woman with a Vase,” now crowns the artist’s tombstone. One of the paintings from this period, “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” was sold at auction in March 2010 for $106.5 million, thus setting a new world record for the value of works of art. In 1935, Marie gave birth to a daughter, the girl was named Maya. Like her mother, she became a model for many of Picasso’s works (“Maya with a Doll,” 1938). Soon after Maya’s birth, Olga Khokhlova learned about her husband’s affair and immediately left with her son. The scandalous breakup with his wife brought Picasso out of balance, he began to paint less, and the bright eroticism disappeared from his canvases. In 1936, Picasso had another mistress, Dora Maar, and their relationship was not a secret. Relations with Walter became strained. One day, Dora and Marie met by chance in Picasso’s studio when he was working on the famous “Guernica.” The angry women demanded that he choose one of them. Pablo replied that they should fight for him. And they really began to fight. Perhaps it was this incident that determined the appearance of crying, despairing women in the sketches for the painting and on the final canvas. Later, in an interview, the artist noted that the fight between his two mistresses became one of the brightest memories of his entire life. Marie was able to forgive her lover even this - they continued to meet occasionally. Gradually, their relationship was reduced to material support from Picasso and correspondence, which continued until the last days of the artist. Despite the discord, Maria Teresa did not lose hope all her life that Pablo would still marry her, but this was not destined to happen. On October 20, 1977, 4 years after Picasso’s death, Marie-Thérèse Walter hanged herself in her garage in the resort town of Juan-les-Pins in the south of France. 1.Portrait of Maria Teresa Walter, 1932 2.Maria Teresa, 1939 3.Maria Teresa Walter with a hat, 1936 4.Reclining woman (Maria Teresa), 1932 5.Maria Teresa, 1932
Dora Maar In the 1920s and 30s, Dora Maar (real name Henrietta Teodora Markovich) was a successful commercial photographer. In addition, she occupied a prominent place in Parisian bohemian circles as a surrealist photographer, artist and poet. However, Maar gained worldwide fame thanks to her connection with Picasso. They met in 1936 at the Two Eggs cafe, where Pablo usually went after an evening walk. He dined with his friend, the poet Paul Eluard, and Elf - Picasso's dog - begged at the neighboring tables. Dora and Pablo's eyes met. In admiration, he muttered a few words in Spanish, which Dora knew very well: she spent her childhood in Argentina. They started talking, and Picasso moved to her table with a glass of beer. Many years later, Picasso said that Dora that evening was wearing black gloves embroidered with pink flowers. She amused herself by striking quickly with a knife between the spread fingers of her left hand lying on the table. At one point she was off by a fraction of an inch. Picasso asked Dora to give him the bloody gloves. He kept them all his life in a special glass display case. Dora Maar was a nervous, unbalanced person; she entered Picasso’s work as a “woman in tears.” Together with the image of Maar, Picasso made a kind of retrospective “journey” through his work: her image appeared in all the variety of styles and manners of writing previously tried by the artist. However, Picasso himself noted that he could never paint her smiling. The most characteristic feature of Dora’s portraits is her huge, deep eyes, crying or pensive, full of anxiety or sorrow. Picasso also loved to emphasize her clear oval face, soft lines of her cheekbones, thin fingers with sharp red nails that looked like drops of blood. In April 1937, the city of Guernica in northern Spain was destroyed by German bombers, killing women and children. This was the first case of mass death of civilians in many years - a new face of war, the naked face of evil, was revealed to the world. The impression made on Picasso by this news was expressed in the frenzy with which he rushed to work. Dora, who had a subtle mind and a sense of beauty, perfectly understood the importance of what was happening before her eyes. It is thanks to her that we can see “Guernica,” Picasso’s internationally recognized masterpiece, in the dynamics of its creation: Dora captured on film numerous sketches and all the intermediate stages of work on the painting. In addition, she also made many photographic and pictorial portraits of Picasso, under her influence he creates experimental works combining photography with engraving and painting. In the relationship between Maar and Picasso, passion was combined with creative, intellectual communication between the two artists; the uniqueness of the characters of both determined the end of their romance. Over the years, Maar became more nervous, and Pablo could not stand women’s hysterics - there was a break in their relationship. In the spring of 1945, Dora began to have seizures. Fearing that she would go crazy or commit suicide, Picasso and their mutual friends sent Dora to the Jacques Lacan psychiatric hospital, where, in addition to psychoanalysis, she was treated with the then common method of treatment - electric shock. After Dora left the hospital, their relationship with Pablo did not resume. 1. Photo 2. Bust of a woman (Dora Maar) 3, 1938 3. Portrait of Dora Maar 2, 1942 4. Portrait of Dora Maar 1, 1943 5. Bust of Dora Maar 1, 1936 6. Weeping Dora
Francoise Gilot The connection between women and Picasso crippled the fates of many of them, some went crazy or committed suicide. The story of Françoise Gilot is unique: after 10 years of living with Picasso, she left him and lived a long, eventful life. In the life of any destroyer of hearts and destinies, sooner or later there will be a woman who cannot be broken and subdued. It was just such a strong and self-sufficient woman that Pablo Picasso met in 1943. He met her in a restaurant and immediately invited her... to take a bath. In occupied Paris, hot water was a luxury, and Picasso was one of the few who could afford it. With Françoise, Picasso learns to enjoy life in a new way. Not absorbing it, but as if watching from the side. This is a period of calm happiness on the coast, enjoying simple pleasures such as the sparkling sea and gently flowing clean sand. This amazing woman managed to fill Picasso with strength without wasting hers. She gave him two children and managed to prove that the family idyll is not a utopia, but a reality that exists for free and loving people. The children of Françoise and Pablo received the surname Picasso and after the artist’s death became owners of part of his fortune. Unlike many of the master’s lovers, Françoise Gilot did not go crazy and did not commit suicide. Having learned about his infidelity, she herself left Picasso, not giving him the opportunity to join the list of abandoned and devastated women. Her future life was rich in events and happy moments. Having published the book “My Life with Picasso,” Françoise Gilot largely went against the will of the artist, but gained worldwide fame. 1,2. Photo 3. Portrait of Françoise, 1946 4. Françoise, Claude and Paloma, 1951 5. Bust of a woman in a hat (Françoise), 1962 6. Woman in a chair (Françoise Gilot), 1946 7. Portrait of Françoise with her hair down, 1953
The great Pablo Picasso had many women. And this is not surprising. Fame and talent attracted them to the artist, like moths attracted by the light of a lantern. Here are just a few of these "moths".
He was an amazing man: small in stature - only 158 centimeters - with that same attractive charm that is now called charisma. Picasso's special aura was colored by his explosive, Spanish temperament and genius.
His love, however, was ruthless and even had a sadistic tint. Therefore, many of Picasso’s women either committed suicide or went crazy. Maria Teresa Walter hanged herself, went into a monastery, and then Jacqueline Roque shot herself, Olga Khokhlova went crazy. After analyzing the Spaniard’s handwriting, Paul Eluard concluded: “He loves passionately, but his love kills.”
And when one of the last mistresses of the genius Genevieve Laporte broke up with Picasso, Jean Cocteau told her: “You made this decision at the right time, maybe it saved your life.”
8 years old Pablo had already written his first serious work, “Picador”. At the age of 16, Picasso, as if jokingly, entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. He dropped out of school just as easily. Instead of poring over books, Pablo and his friends began to play around in Madrid brothels.
At the age of 19, the artist set off to conquer Paris. Before leaving, Picasso painted a self-portrait. At the top of the picture he signed in black paint: “I am the king!” However, the “king” had a hard time in the capital of France. There was no money. One winter, to keep warm, he lit a stone fireplace with his own handiwork.
On the personal front, things were going much better. Women have always adored Picasso.
But the artist himself cynically said: “For me, there are only two types of women - goddesses and rags for wiping feet.”
Moreover, Picasso quickly turned all his goddesses into rags.
First lover
His first lover was Fernanda Olivier (she was 18, he was 23 years old). In Paris, Pablo Picasso lives in a poor quarter in Montmartre, in a hostel where aspiring artists lived and where Fernanda Olivier sometimes poses for them. There she meets Picasso, becomes his model and his girlfriend. The lovers lived in poverty. In the mornings they stole croissants and milk. Gradually people began to buy Picasso's paintings.
They lived together for almost a decade, and from this period a large number of both the actual portraits of Fernanda and generally female images painted from her remain. According to researchers, she was also the model for the creation of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” one of Picasso’s main paintings, a turning point for the art of the 20th century.
But there was a time when they lived apart (summer and autumn of 1907). This summer left some bad memories. Both he and she had affairs with others. But the worst thing was that he lived with a woman who did not understand Cubism at all, she did not like him.
Perhaps Picasso was experiencing organic depression; Later, when he returned to Paris, he was struck by a stomach ailment. His pre-ulcerative condition. From now on, the relationship between the brush and the canvas will not be in vain for the artist - cubism as a complex was as simple as playing chess in three dimensions. And they parted - Picasso and Fernanda.
First love
The artist's first true love came in 1917, when he met one of Sergei Diaghilev's ballerinas, Olga Khokhlova. Olga danced at the premiere of the ballet “Parade” at the Chatelet Theater. Pablo Picasso was responsible for the costumes and set design.
The artist introduced her to his family. Mother didn't like her. Olga is a foreigner, Russian, no match for her brilliant son! Life will show that the mother was right.
Olga and Picasso married on June 18, 1918 in the Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. They were happily married for three years and often participated in public events. On February 4, 1921, Olga gave birth to a son, Paulo (Paul). From that moment on, the couple's relationship began to rapidly deteriorate.
Olga wasted her husband’s money, and he was desperately angry. And another important reason for the disagreement was the role imposed by Olga on Picasso. She wanted to see him as a salon portrait painter, a commercial artist, moving in high society and receiving orders there.
This kind of life bored the genius to death. This was immediately reflected in his paintings: Picasso depicted his wife exclusively as an evil old woman with threatening, long, sharp teeth.
Picasso saw his wife this way for the rest of his life.
In 1927, when Picasso was 46 years old, he ran away from Olga to 17-year-old Marie-Therese Walter.
It was a fire, a mystery, madness
The time of love for Marie-Therese Walter was special - both in life and in work. The works of this period differed sharply from previously created paintings both in style and color. The period of Marie-Therese Walter, especially before the birth of his daughter, is the pinnacle of his work.
In 1935, Olga learned from a friend about her husband’s affair, and also that Maria Theresa was pregnant. Taking Paulo with her, she immediately left for the south of France and filed for divorce. Picasso refused to divide the property equally, as required by French law, and therefore Olga remained his legal wife until her death. She died of cancer in 1955 in Cannes. Picasso did not go to the funeral. He simply breathed a sigh of relief.
After the birth of the child, he loses interest in Maria and takes on another mistress - 29-year-old artist Dora Maar. One day, Dora and Marie-Therese met by chance in Picasso’s studio when he was working on the famous “Guernica.” The angry women demanded that he choose one of them. Pablo replied that they should fight for him. And the ladies attacked each other with fists. Then the artist said that the fight between his two mistresses was the most striking event in his life.
Maria Teresa soon hanged herself. For the passionate Dora, the break with Picasso was a disaster. Dora ended up in the Parisian psychiatric hospital of St. Anne, where she was treated with electric shock. She was rescued from there and brought out of the crisis by her old friend, the famous psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
After this, Dora completely withdrawn into herself, becoming for many a symbol of a woman whose life was shattered by her love for the cruel genius of Picasso. Secluded in her apartment near the Rue Grand-Augustin, she plunged into mysticism and astrology.
Not submitted to love
In the life of any destroyer of hearts and destinies, sooner or later there will be a woman who cannot be broken and subdued. It was just such a strong and self-sufficient woman that Pablo Picasso met in 1943. He met her in a restaurant and immediately invited her... to take a bath. In occupied Paris, hot water was a luxury, and Picasso was one of the few who could afford it.
With Françoise, Picasso learns to enjoy life in a new way. Not absorbing it, but as if watching from the side. This is a period of calm happiness on the coast, enjoying simple pleasures such as the sparkling sea and gently flowing clean sand. It is these sparks of happiness that we see in “The Joy of Life” - the brightest picture of the period with the name “Françoise”.
This amazing woman managed to fill Picasso with strength without wasting her own. She gave him two children and managed to prove that the family idyll is not a utopia, but a reality that exists for free and loving people. The children of Françoise and Pablo received the surname Picasso and after the artist’s death became owners of part of his fortune.
Unlike many of the master’s lovers, Françoise Gilot did not go crazy and did not commit suicide. Having learned about his infidelity, she herself left Picasso, not giving him the opportunity to join the list of abandoned and devastated women.
Her future life was rich in events and happy moments. Having published the book “My Life with Picasso,” Françoise Gilot largely went against the will of the artist, but gained worldwide fame.
Over the last two decades of Picasso's life, Jacqueline Roque was by his side. Her devotion, love and caring captivated the artist. Such qualities in women have always been valuable to him, and in recent years they have been simply necessary. For almost 20 years, Jacqueline was almost his only model; he painted about 400 portraits of her - this is all his Jacqueline.
